DxO’s flourishing reputation as on of the best imaging software providers continues to go from strength to strength. Its stable, which includes PureRAW4, Nik Collection 7 and Film Pack 7, has been joined by PhotoLab 8, the latest update of its raw workflow software. 

New key features include versatile Hue Masks for precision creative control, an innovative tone curve with Luma Control, lens softness compensation and workflow improvements. 

We’ve left the biggest news till last, though, with DxO’s latest version of its denoising and detail extraction tool, DeepPRIME XD2s. Currently, for Fujifilm X-Trans raws you only get XD, but the XD2s latest update makes it compatible with the very latest cameras including the Canon EOS R5 Mark II. 

DxO Photo Lab 8 Elite at a glance:

• From $139/£129 (Essential) to $299/£249 for Elite with Film Pack 7 Bundle
• Elite edition $229 / £209 for a lifetime license; no subscription options, upgrade options available
• Mac and Windows, 30 day free trial available from www.dxo.com
• DeepPRIME XD/XD2s noise reduction 
• Lens softness compensation
• Hue Masks for precise control
• U-point local adjustments 
• Luma Tone curve
• Keywording, colour tags, star ratings available
• Support for Fujifilm X-Trans raw files with XD – but not currently DeepPRIME XD2s
• DxO lens correction modules

DxO Photo Lab 8 Elite Features:

Working in conjunction with DeepPRIME is a real-time preview magnifier with a working range of 100% to 1600% that shows the effect of its denoising and demosaicing action, so you can check the result before exporting. The preview works with DeepPRIME but also with DxO’s other editing tools including Exposure, ClearView and Smart Lighting.

DxO is renowned for its Optics Modules that immediately improve images by correcting distortion, vignetting and fringing, and there are profiles covering thousands of camera and lens combinations. If your system is not loaded with a particular profile you will get a prompt to download the appropriate module. The performance of these profiles has been improved with new lens softness compensation for even crisper details but without the issues of artefacts and fringing.

Finally, although not a feature as such, DxO PhotoLab 8 is available for outright purchase at £209 / $229 for a lifetime license. No subscriptions here. From DXO.com – buy now.

DxO PhotoLab has long been a quality raw image editor with impressive denoising skills supported by a vast collection of camera and lens correction profiles. Usability, control and workflow have improved as upgraded versions have come along and PhotoLab 8 rates highly. It’s different from Adobe Lightroom in that PhotoLab 8 does not create a catalogue, but keywording, star and colour ratings are available.

No sub-folder support may mean a rethink on your folder structure. For example, I am a Lightroom user where there is sub-folder support so I have folders within folders. Once you click on a folder with compatible content the previews are generated quickly. 

DxO PhotoLab 8: DeepPRIME XD/XD2s

Current digital cameras are so good that you can shoot at ISO 1600 and higher and not worry about digital noise. However, if you want the best results from your raws – which includes images taken at low and high ISOs and with old and new cameras – applying noise reduction is a very much a good thing.

While Adobe Lightroom/Photoshop Denoise and Topaz Denoise AI are good at their job I have found that DxO’s DeepPRIME denoising skills seen in PhotoLab and PureRAW to be consistently better. It is true, however, that sometimes DeepPRIME can be too aggressive and results can look false or exhibit strange halo effects, although DxO has added controls to combat this.

PhotoLab 8 is home to the latest DeepPRIME variant, XD2s, with fine-tuning possible with three sliders, Luminance, Dead pixels and Force details. Fujifilm X-Trans raws are not compatible at this time and are processed with DeepPRIME XD.

The big news in PhotoLab 8 is the provision of a real-time magnifier. With the choice of preview boxes of two sizes and magnifications from 100% to 1600% it is easy to check the impact of the various DxO and DeepPRIME settings before hitting the export button. The preview image is refreshed a second or so after a slider is adjusted and the magnifier can be used on any part of the image. I found this tool really useful and easy to use, so it’s a very worthwhile addition.

I tested PhotoLab 8 DeepPRIME XD/XD2s with raws from a range of digital cameras. 

The night shots above of Guildford Abbots Hospital were taken on an OM System OM-1 at ISO 3200 and ISO 12,800. The Micro Four Thirds format is good with noise but the smaller format at high ISOs does mean noise is more obvious when enlarged. I put the two raws through PhotoLab 8’s XD2s and PureRAW 4 which has XD2 noise reduction, although it may be upgraded to the latest technology soon.  

You can see that the raws put through PhotoLab 8 emerged brighter than the original and that is without making any additional brightness corrections. With most of my test raws the images were not only brightened by XD2s but a few gained a minor magenta colour cast that was easily corrected.

My shot of a grey squirrel in the garden was taken on a dull afternoon using the fixed aperture RF 800mm f/11 lens on a Canon EOS R5 set to ISO 25,600 to enable an exposure of 1/800sec at f/11. 

Using PhotoLab XD2s I used the Luminance and Force detail controls set to 50 and then 100 to see how the software would work with the squirrel’s fur. To be honest, there wasn’t much – any! – benefit of using the higher setting and 50 did a fine job removing noise and giving very good fur detail. Of course, images with high frequency detail such as bird feathers might see a more evident quality uplift with higher settings.

The next low light shot I used was taken at an evening air display at Shuttleworth. I just wanted a few record shots of the amazing display going on above our heads so I added the 100-500mm to my Canon EOS R5, sat back in my deck chair and took pictures. The low light meant I needed ISO 12,800 to stand a chance of getting a sharp shot and that speed allowed an exposure of 1/500sec at f/7.1. I hoped that was enough to stop any camera shake and subject movement plus I had my fingers crossed that there wasn’t too much image-debilitating haze and smoke.

Again, no problem with the results from PhotoLab 8. The image was brightened, the noise simply vanished and the plane’s detail emerged clearly from the gloom. This was an impressive result.

I was keen to see how PhotoLab 8 and XD2s worked with older raws, and how it would cope with an image with deep shadows that needed serious recovery. So my final high ISO test image was of a very dim alleyway in Shanghai taken 13 years ago using a Nikon D3s set to ISO 12,800. 

In Adobe Lightroom I moved the shadow slider to 89 to lighten the dark areas to the desired level and, as you would expect, the grain was very obvious and there were a few dead pixels too. That image is shown above magnified to 200%.

I processed the raw through PhotoLab 8 XD2s with the Luminance and Force detail sliders at 50 and at 100 and the Dead pixels slider to 24.

After processing, I adjusted the DxO DNG files using Lightroom to lift the shadows to match the look of my original adjusted raw.  

You probably won’t be surprised to learn that PhotoLab 8 did a remarkable job of producing a very clean image free of noise. What was even more impressive was how good the image appeared with the shadows lifted. The gate and grill details showed great clarity and much better than you might expect given the really low light levels in the scene and age of the sensor. 

DxO PhotoLab 8: Hue masks

Precisely controlling tones and colour in an image is made easy in PhotoLab 8 with a selection of masking tools. You can adjust local areas with U-Point technology or use a graduate filter across larger regions such as skies, for example. The very powerful Hue Mask lets you select areas of specific hues which can then be fine-tuned further or if the mask has picked up colours you want left untouched, it can be erased or have its opacity adjusted. Changes made to masks and the image are shown in real-time and masks can be turned off, renamed or deleted.

The Hue Mask worked really well with great control. If there is anything missing it is automated options to mask the sky, subject or background with a single click. However, masking the sky in PhotoLab 8 is simple enough with the colour picker and if your photo has blue in areas other than the sky, it is easy to erase the mask where needed. 

DxO PhotoLab 8: Luma Curve

Having a tone curve allows you to tweak contrast and tonality and PhotoLab 8 has RGB, separate R, G and B channels and there’s something new, the Luma channel (L). This tool lets you make tonal changes without affecting colour saturation, and it can be used in conjunction with the Tone Picker. With this active, just click on the area of the image you want to adjust and its place on the Luma curve appears. Any curves you create can be saved as a preset and there’s a drop-down menu of presets to get you in the right region and then you can fine-tune. 

The Luma channel works well for delicate control and is another useful addition in PhotoLab 8.

DxO PhotoLab 8: Verdict

DxO PhotoLab 8 has an immediate appeal to everyone who prefers to buy their software outright, but it also has plenty of performance benefits and you have to say that this app is a powerful, very capable raw editor. Local adjustments, Hue Masks, LUTs and much more enable a huge amount of accurate colour and contrast control. The Hue Masks worked really well and give impressive results with minimal effort.

When you want to squeeze every gram of image quality out of a raw, PhotoLab 8’s DeepPRIME XD2s does a great job removing noise and extracting detail. I used it on raws from a variety of cameras, old and new, and on files shot at a range of ISO speeds and the benefit in all cases was obvious and it was fast doing its job too.

Related reading:

• DxO PhotoLab 7 Elite Review – worth the upgrade?
• DxO PhotoLab 6 Elite Review
• DxO PureRAW 3 review: get more from raw

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Skylum Luminar Neo is available to purchase with a one-time payment or as a subscription – at present at very attractively discounted prices. So, how does this photo editing software stack up?

Skylum Luminar NEO at a glance:

• From $79 / £59 per annum, $139 / £99 one-off for lifetime perpetual
• Subscription
• Works as a standalone or plugin
• Mac or Windows
• https://skylum.com/

Skylum developed Luminar Neo from the ground up to be different from previous Luminar editors like Luminar 4 and Luminar AI. It has all the Luminar AI tools and a very similar layout, but has additional features and more ‘state-of-the-art technologies’. Unlike previous editions, Luminar Neo has a modular engine that enables faster image processing.

The one-time purchase includes Luminar Neo and all the maintenance and feature updates delivered for this software version (but not future versions). It can be expanded by purchasing ‘Extensions’. Alternatively, a Pro subscription gets you the Luminar Neo software, all future updates and versions, plus all extensions released during the subscription period. It’s worth keeping an eye on the Skylum website as there are frequent discounts and best deals.

Standalone or plugin

Luminar Neo can operate as a standalone package for working non-destructively on JPEGs and raw files, or as a plugin for Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Lightroom Classic and Photos for Mac OS.

In this review, I’ve focused on using Luminar Neo as a standalone package, but it’s easy to access the same tools from within the host software. With an image open in Photoshop, select Filter > Skylum Software > Luminar Neo. In the Develop module of Lightroom select File > Plug-in Extras > Transfer to Luminar Neo. In Apple Photos the route is Edit > Extensions > Luminar Neo.

Extensions

Skylum has committed to developing Luminar Neo into a complete creative editing package and is expanding its functionality with ‘Extensions’. These include HDR Merge, Upscale AI, AI Background Removal, Noiseless AI, Supersharp AI and Focus Stacking Extensions. This review concentrates on the main software and doesn’t look at the Extensions.

Number of devices

Skylum offer licenses for one or two devices, which the company refers to as ‘seats’. Two seats allow you to install and activate Luminar Neo on two devices at once, regardless of their operating system. For example, you can use one seat to activate Luminar Neo on a Mac and the other on a Windows computer. Both seats can also be used for Windows or macOS computers.

Moreover, you can always manage your activations in your Skylum Account. Further seats can be acquired there for those with multiple computers, or want to share a license with others.

It’s also possible to reset a license from your old machine at no cost and activate that license on your new device. Just log in to your Skylum account to reset activations for the professional photo editing software Luminar Neo.

Getting started

As usual, the first step is to open an image. Luminar Neo has a catalog section which works with your computer’s filing structure, and you don’t have to import images into it. You simply specify which folders you wish to work with. It’s also possible to work on individual images using the ‘Add Image’ button in the top left corner of the page to locate the file.

The catalogue is really just a file browser, but comes with the ability to create albums. These are virtual collections of images that can be gathered together from different folders. The images aren’t copied or relocated – Luminar Neo just holds the location data and allows you to see all the images in a particular album on the same screen. It’s a handy function.

Double-clicking on an image in the catalog enlarges it so that it fills the frame. Clicking once on the larger view zooms into 100%. Double-clicking again returns to the browser view.

To start editing an image, select it in the catalog. Then click on either ‘Presets’ or ‘Edit’ at the top of the screen. Presets are a great starting point as they enable a number of adjustments to be applied with one click.

Upon selecting ‘Presets’, Luminar Neo suggests a few Preset Collections that it considers appropriate for the image [top of the column, right of the screen]. Below it are a host of other Preset Collections included with the software. [Buy others by clicking on the ‘Add’ button].

Each of the Preset Collections contains a number of Presets to be applied with a single click. For example, the Nature Preset Collection has six presets called ‘Newt Noir’, ‘Sunny Small’, ‘MicroWorld’, ‘Distinctive Drops’, ‘Best Close up’ and ‘Arctic Atoms’. Clicking on each in turn lets you see their effects.

When working on a 2019 8-Core Intel Core i9 iMac and editing 61MP raw files from the Sony Alpha A7R IV, I experienced a couple of seconds lag between selecting a Preset and its effect becoming visible.

[If you particularly like a Preset, add it as a favourite by clicking on the heart next to its name]

[Remove a preset effect by clicking on the curved arrow next to its name in the column on the right or by selecting ‘Revert to Original’ in the Actions dropdown list at the bottom of the screen].

After a Preset has been applied, access the controls to tweak its impact by clicking ‘Edit’. In the ‘Edits’ column, Luminar Neo automatically reveals the adjustments that have been applied to an image by a Preset. You can adjust the sliding control settings in the column on the right as you wish.

The uppermost and most recently applied Edit is ‘expanded’ to reveal the sliders. Click on others below it to reveal and adjust their settings.

Using the applied Edits controls to adjust a Preset reverts the image to that point in the history of the Preset editing process. For example, after applying a black and white preset, I was presented with a list of Edits controls, with the first I had used at the bottom:

[In order, Film Grain at the top, then Black & White, Supercontrast, Color, Enhance, Structure, Face AI, Skin AI. Skin AI was the first edit applied].

Similarly, a click on Supercontrast – applied before the Black & White conversion was made – and the image reverts to colour. Then, after you’ve made the Supercontrast –  or adjusted any earlier Edits – you can return the image to monochrome with the new edits by clicking on the top Edit: in this case Film Grain.

There’s a ‘Tools’ tab alongside the Edits tab and clicking on that reveals loads of additional tools which also have sliding controls. These are grouped into ‘Favourites’, ‘Extensions’, ‘Essentials’, ‘Creative’, ‘Portrait’ and ‘Professional’. There’s a more comprehensive list there than you’ll find in the Edits section.

The Essentials section has tools such as Develop Raw (with the typical controls you’d expect to adjust a raw file), Enhance AI, Erase, Structure AI, Colour, Black & White Denoise and more. Basically, the tools to enable exposure, contrast, colour and sharpness of an image to be adjusted.

The Creative section, however, has options such as Relight AI, Sky AI, Atmosphere AI, Sunrays and more. These tools enable you to make dramatic edits to images, significantly changing their mood. They can be very effective and are easy to use, but are not suitable for use for entering competitions, like Landscape Photographer of the Year.

Four of the five tools in the Portrait section use AI to help you improve the appearance of photographs of people. They generally work well, but their effects aren’t entirely predictable. The automatic Skin defects Removal tool, for example, removed one freckle on a models face but left another nearby in place.

[TIP: Before you start work on an image, right click on the image thumbnail in the Layers column left of screen, and select ‘Duplicate Layer’. Then you’re not working on your original image].

As well as duplicating, deleting or hiding a layer, Luminar Neo allows you to add new layers to an image. There are four layer collections with a selection of flare, light leak, sparkle and bokeh effects that you can apply.

Selecting the ‘Load Image’ option allows you to create a layer from another of your images. Choosing this option opens a standard file browser rather than the catalog. It’s a good idea to know which image you want to add in advance. The new layer is added with 50% opacity by default so that you can see the layer(s) beneath; but cannot adjust the opacity to suit.

Each of the Edit and Tool adjustments can be applied with a mask. The mask can be applied as a brush, a linear gradient, a radial gradient, or by AI. Whichever method you select, the effect of the adjustments disappears at first and reappears where you apply the mask. There’s also an eraser to remove the mask.

Using the brush to paint in the effect presents controls to adjust the size and softness of the brush, along with a third slider  to set the effect strength. The Strength slider adjusts the visibility of the edit from that point onwards. It doesn’t affect the area you have already painted.

However, you can adjust the opacity of the layer using the Layer Properties control. When finished, hit the return key, and select a  previous Tool to make further edits.

Replacing a sky

Sky AI is one of the most impressive aspects of Luminar Neo. A dull sky can be replaced in a few clicks. The software does a remarkably good job of blending sky into the foreground, handling even a swathe of leaves and twigs that reach into the sky.

If you swap a bright overcast sky for an intense sunset, it will likely look a little strange around complex areas with fine detail. There are other skies to choose from that may fit the scene better. Or upload your own. Alternatively, duplicate the image layer and use Sky AI to replace the sky in the duplicate. Then reduce the opacity a little to produce a much more natural effect.

With your sky selected and applied, you can then move it up or down, left or right, or flip it horizontally. It’s also possible to soften the sky: handy if you’ve shot your subject with a wide aperture. And, you can add a reflection of the sky to any water in the scene. There are also controls that let you adjust the rest of the image to match the colour of the sky more closely.

As with all of the Tools and Edits, it’s possible to create a mask of the sky and paint on it using a brush or one of the gradient tools. In most instances, I found this unnecessary as the software does a great job of recognising the sky. But it can be helpful when there are areas of uniform tone in the non-sky areas that cause confusion.

Skylum Luminar NEO verdict

While the impact of the Presets and some of the AI-powered tools can be hard to predict, I enjoy using Luminar Neo. It is capable of producing some great results.

The Presets can produce attractive-looking images by themselves, but it’s good to be able to tweak the final image and apply additional edits using the Tools. Remember that the order in which the tools are applied affects the end result. Turn an image black and white, for example, and then add a blue sky, and you’ll have to revisit the black and white conversion controls to take the colour from the sky.

In the early stages of using Luminar Neo, you’re likely to spend time investigating the impact of the Presets and Tools, but they are easy to apply and their impact can be removed quickly if they don’t work for you. After a while you’ll find those that you like and you can create your own Presets for future use.

Unsurprisingly, Skylum pushes the subscription model for purchasing Luminar Neo and it can be hard to find the one-off purchase option.

There’s also an option to buy ‘X Membership Premium’, which gives access to educational materials, an exclusive community and extra skies, Presets, LUTs and overlays. This, plus the selling of extra presets and skies within the software can give something of a marketplace experience. On its own though, Luminar Neo has lots of functionality for creation of one’s own presets and skies to add – these may well be enough.

Related articles:

• Best free photo editing software for computers and mobile
• Best photo editing software – subscription free
• Adobe Photoshop review
• Best video editing software

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Affinity Photo 2 is the perfect Photoshop alternative for anyone who wants professional photo editing power without an Adobe subscription. And this really is a professional tool, matching or even beating Photoshop in many key areas. It’s recently been re-released in version 2 (now with a free v2.1 update) to incorporate many new features. In fact we cover a lot of these in a set of Affinity Photo 2 tutorial videos you can watch online:

1. Affinity Photo 2 introduction and features
2. Focus stacking/Focus Merge in Affinity Photo 2
3. HDR Merge and Tone Mapping in Affinity Photo 2
4. Retouching and object removal in Affinity Photo 2
5. Affinity Photo 2’s non-destructive raw processing

Affinity Photo 2 at a glance:

• Prices: For MacOS or Windows: NOW $34.99 / £33.99 (was $69.99 / £67.99).
• For iPad: NOW £8.99 (was $18.49 / £17.99)
  • For entire creative suite across all platforms: NOW $82.99 / £79.99 (was $164.99 / £159) .
• Web: affinity.serif.com (note that the company was acquired by Canva in March 2024)
• Serious Photoshop alternative
• Many new features in Version 2
• Powerful layers, masking and retouching
• HDR merge, panoramas, focus stacking
• Adjustment layers and Live Filters

Affinity Photo 2 is one of three professional creative applications from Affinity and works alongside Affinity Designer and Affinity Publisher as part of a tightly bound creative suite.

Affinity Photo works perfectly on its own, however, and is just about the closest direct alternative to Photoshop on the market. Like Photoshop, it’s designed for sophisticated, detailed and advanced image editing, though can also be used for quick and simple image enhancements too.

Keep in mind that Affinity Photo is an all-round design tool, not just a photo editor. In this respect it’s a lot like Photoshop; while both are about the most powerful in-depth photo manipulation tools around, they can do more. Affinity Photo supports vector graphics for creating illustrations and type layers for adding text. Here, though, we look specifically is Affinity Photo 2’s potential as a photo editor – and it has plenty.

The price of Affinity Photo 2 is slightly higher than the original Affinity Photo, but still low for software of this calibre – low enough to be mistaken for a budget photo editor for novices, though nothing could be further from the truth. And Adobe refugees will be delighted to learn that not only are there no subscription plans, and that until version 2, every single update since launch had been free. Indeed, since the launch of v2, there has been a free v2.1 update.

Affinity Photo is not really designed for beginners. There are no cataloguing and browsing features and it doesn’t offer one-click insta-ready ‘looks’ for your social channels. This is an old-school photo editor, Photoshop style, but without the cash outlay or the subscription.

Affinity does not have a cloud-based ecosystem like Adobe’s Creative Cloud, and while there is an iPad version of Affinity Photo (which is extremely good, by the way), there’s no equivalent of Adobe’s cloud based image library, as used by Lightroom.

What it offers is an extremely powerful non-destructive workflow, sophisticated layer and masking controls and the ability to carry out focus stacking (focus merge), HDR merge and tone mapping and HDR merge, and all without additional plug-ins or paid-for ‘extensions’. All this is on top of non-destructive image adjustments and unique ‘live filters’ which allow non-destructive use of filter effects which are normally a one-way ‘destructive’ option in other editors.

Affinity Personas

Affinity Photo offers five different workspaces for different tasks. These aren’t just different configurations of the same tools. The tools are different, and are used at different stages of the workflow.

In order of appearance on the top toolbar, these are the Photo Persona, Liquify, Develop, Tone Mapping and Export Personas. You don’t go through them one by one in linear order. You can switch between them manually as required and in some instances they will open automatically.

For example, if you open a raw file it will go straight into the Develop Persona where raw processing is carried out. It’s a bit like Adobe Camera Raw, but integrated into the Affinity Photo interface. And if you create an HDR Merge, you’ll be taken straight to the Tone Mapping Persona to make your adjustments.

You’re unlikely to spend a lot of time in the Liquify Persona, unless you do some heavy retouching and like Dali-esque reality enhancements. The Export Persona is for choosing file formats, colour and compression settings. Affinity Photo saves images in its own bespoke file format, so you need these export controls to produce regular JPEG or TIFF images for sharing or publishing.

Most of the work in Affinity Photo takes place in the Photo Persona, so let’s take a look at that first. This is the closest thing to editing images in Photoshop.

Photo Persona

The Photo Persona is laid out in the same way as almost every regular photo editor. The left-hand side of the screen is a vertical strip of tools, while on the right is a set of panels for layers, adjustments, filters and more. These panels can be dragged off and floated separately on the screen, or recombined in any arrangement of tabs and panels that suits you.

Most adjustments in Affinity Photo are non-destructive. When you apply an adjustment, it’s added as a new adjustment layer and can be altered at any time in the future. Each adjustment layer can have its own mask and blend mode, which is just how Photoshop works.

However, Affinity Photo also offers adjustment presets, which appear in the adjustment panel as small thumbnails showing your image with that preset applied. It only takes a moment to save any manual adjustments you make as presets too. This is a really neat system that lets you save and re-use your favourite adjustments.

Affinity Photo also offers a large selection of non-destructive Live Filters. You can apply noise reduction, depth of field tilt-shift effects, even complex lighting effects in a completely reversible way. This is the advantage of using the bespoke Affinity file format – because this ‘editability’ is preserved when you save, close and re-open the file.

One of the new additions in Affinity Photo 2 is a new Mesh Warp Live filter. With this you can make localised perspective and warp adjustments that can be checked or changed later – it’s a lot simpler to use for photographs than the Liquify Persona.

Of course, you can combine regular image layers in Affinity Photo. Indeed, Affinity says the number of layers supported is infinite, though you’re likely to run out of memory at some point, we’d guess.

Everywhere you turn in Affinity Photo, you find tools of unexpected power or usefulness. Portrait retouchers may appreciate the frequency separation feature, and amongst all the regular cloning and retouching tools is an easily-missed ‘inpainting’ tool that you can use to paint over objects you want to remove – instantly.

New features in Affinity 2 include the ability to combine masks non-destructively and create Live mask layers containing luminosity range masks, hue range masks and ‘band pass’ masks. These and new ‘Layer State’ options could prove useful for photographers working on complex photo-montages or image composites.

Develop Persona

This is where Affinity Photo processes raw images and it opens automatically with raw files. It has a lot in common with Adobe Camera Raw and offers a wide range of adjustments for optimising raw images, before processing them into an editable form for the Photo Persona.

New to Affinity Photo 2 is that this raw processing can be non-destructive. You can use a ‘raw layer’ and go back at any time to change your settings. The Affinity Develop process need no longer be the one-way process it was before. This puts Affinity Photo on the same level as Photoshop in working with non-destructive raw ‘layers’. Neither has the same seamless raw processing as Adobe Lightroom, but they do blend raw processing with far more sophisticated edits outside the scope of Lightroom’s more limited toolset.

Affinity Photo is not designed around automatic corrections and quick fixes. It will open raw files as they are and will leave you to do any tweaking or fettling needed in its five tabbed panels.

You use the Basic tab to adjust exposure, contrast, clarity, saturation, white balance, shadows and highlights and more. Not all of the tools are enabled by default, and the White Balance checkbox is pretty inconspicuous. It doesn’t offer scene type WB presets, either, so you’ll have to type in your own temperature/tint values or use the sliders.

In the Lens tab you should see that Affinity Photo has automatically selected a lens correction profile, but you can also carry out perspective corrections here too. Affinity Photo will apply chromatic aberration correction from the lens profile, and may give even better results using the ‘Estimate from Image’ option.

The Details tab offers, as you might expect, noise reduction tools, but here also is one of Affinity Photo’s many hidden gems. The ‘Detail Refinement’ checkbox reveals a pair of simple sliders that enhance the definition and clarity of fine detail far more effectively than regular sharpening tools and without the halos and edge effects.

The Tones panel has tools for adjusting curves, black and white conversion and split toning, but these are things you might elect to do in the Photo Persona.

The final Overlay tab also illustrates the potential crossover between the Develop and Photo Personas. You can carry out local adjustments in the Photo Persona, but the advantage of using the Develop Persona is that it can access the extended tonal information in raw files.

Tone Mapping Persona

This might seem like a specialist tool, but it’s worth a closer look for a couple of reasons. The first is that HDR is not just an in-your-face special effect that’s (arguably) had its day, but an important technical tool for any photographer trying to manage very high brightness ranges in the scenes they photograph.

The second is that Affinity Photo’s Tone Mapping Persona is extremely good at it! It can automatically merge a stack of bracketed HDR exposures, but it can also tone map a single raw file – and very often, a raw file will have all the extended tonal data you need.

From there you can choose a Tone Mapping preset – and these are very good – or make adjustments manually. It’s often simplest to start from a preset and then wind back the settings (or beef them up) to suit the scene and your own taste.

The bottom line is that Affinity Photo can Tone Map (it doesn’t use the term ‘HDR’) at least as well as any other tool on the market and, if you like your HDR subtle and not supersaturated, it’s actually one of the best.

The HDR merge facility built into the Tone Mapping Persona is not the only clever image merging tool. Affinity Photo also offers focus stacking and panorama stitching.

When you stitch panoramas you inevitably get ‘wedges’ of blank space around the edges where the software has adjusted, repositioned and transformed the individual frames to fit seamlessly, and in Affinity Photo you’re left to crop these out manually. It doesn’t have the clever Boundary Warp or content aware fill options in Adobe Lightroom, but then it does do an extremely good job of blending images and, in particular, blending exposure variations seamlessly.

Affinity Photo can also edit 360° spherical images from cameras like the new Insta360 X3. These need to be in JPEG format and in Affinity Photo you need to swap to an Equirectangular Projection mode via the Layers menu. And if you just went “What?”, welcome to Affinity Photo. If there is a technical term for a process, Affinity Photo will quote it.

So yes, Affinity Photo can be quite technical. But as long as you’re ready to learn some new jargon and do some exploring, you’ll soon discover just how much power this program puts at your fingertips. It may not have the surface gloss and novice hand-holding of some other programs, but it does get the job done very well indeed – and treats you as an adult.

The real issues with Affinity Photo 2, if any, are that it has a steep learning curve and that it lacks any kind of browsing tools. The learning curve won’t be a problem for more experienced photo editors, but even they may need to spend a couple of hours learning the ropes.

What is non-destructive editing and do you need it?

Non-destructive editing is where your original image stays unchanged and your editing software effectively ‘previews’ your edits, saving them as processing instructions rather than applying them directly to the pixels in your photos.

But with non-destructive editing, your edits are only visible inside the software used to create them. Affinity Photo edits are only re-editable if you use the bespoke Affinity file format to save your images, just as your Lightroom edits are invisible to any other program.

Non-destructive editing gives you the freedom to change your mind about your adjustments at any time in the future, but locks you into the software you used to create them.

Affinity Photo for iPad

Affinity Photo for iPad is sold separately or as part of Affinity’s Universal License bundle. Affinity effectively optimised Affinity Photo for a small touchscreen interface long before Photoshop for iPad was released. It’s true that Affinity Photo for iPad can’t replicate the whole desktop interface or feature set, but it gets remarkably close.

It is a slightly more simplistic workflow than Adobe’s Creative Cloud system, but one that doesn’t rely on proprietary servers or hosting. Affinity Photo for iPad uses Apple’s own iCloud storage system which, for Mac users, is part of the operating system already and, perhaps, their regular workflow.

Affinity Photo 2 Verdict

Affinity Photo 2 is a significant update of a hugely powerful image-editor that matches pretty much anything that Photoshop can do and improves on it in many areas. In that respect, its low asking price is especially impressive. Just don’t get the idea that this is budget software, dated, dumbed down in some way or horrible to use. The opposite is true.

It does help, however, if you already know your way around a photo editor and are prepared to learn. And while Affinity Photo is part of a broader design ecosystem, there is no centralised asset management or cataloguing system like Adobe Bridge. Also if you want one-click presets and insta-ready ‘looks’, you’re in the wrong place.

Having got that out of the way, the bottom line is that Affinity Photo 2 is an exceptionally powerful photo editor that can handle everything from non-destructive adjustments through HDR, panorama stitching, focus stacking, 360 image editing right through to professional retouching, multi-layer composites, illustration and original artwork. With 50% discounts now across the suite, the formerly 30 day free trial is now 7-day free trial to help you make your mind up. At these rates, you shouldn’t need longer than that.

Featured image credit: Rod Lawton.

To find out more in-depth about Affinity Photo 2’s capabilities, visit our other further articles:

Fix perspective and lens distortion with Affinity Photo 2
Creative depth of field effects
Layer images with blend modes
Combine and mask image layers
Master raw editing
Master Affinity Photo 2 for iPad
Create perfect panoramas

See more options in our guide to the best photo editing software, or have a look at the best photo apps for smartphones.

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The post Affinity Photo 2 Review – top value professional photo editing software appeared first on Amateur Photographer.

DxO PhotoLab 7 Elite edition at a glance:

• Raw editing software
• Mac and Windows
• Free 30-day trial
• Non-subscription, one-time purchase
• Fully-featured Elite edition costs $229/£209 ($109/£99 if upgrading)
• Pared-down Essential edition costs $139/£129 but doesn’t have DeepPrime, LUTs, colour calibration or HSL
• Support for Fuji X-Trans Raw files
• www.dxo.com

With an emphasis on image quality and the sort of tools photographers regularly need, DxO PhotoLab has long been amongst the best photo editing software, especially for those who shoot raw. PhotoLab 7 continues the trend with considered updates and features that build on DxO’s excellent reputation for raw processing. It’s all about optimising and enhancing what the camera captures, rather than transforming it with special effects or generative AI.

DeepPrime XD Noise reduction

The only feature that utilises AI in PhotoLab 7 is certainly its best. First introduced in PhotoLab 6, DeepPrime XD is able to clear up noisy photos to an astonishing degree. If you have photos shot at high ISOs that you thought were unusable, think again. DeepPrime XD can extract an incredible amount of detail, cut down the grainy luminance noise and build in extra fine detail and sharpness. 

Noise reduction is something DxO has always excelled at. But Topaz Denoise AI and Lightroom Denoise are both excellent alternatives. In the current noise wars, DeepPrime XD is – for me – still the best there is, but the gap is certainly smaller than it once was.

Colour calibration

A welcome new feature in DxO PhotoLab 7, the Calibrated Colour Profile tool allows you to get supremely accurate colours by including an industry standard colour chart (from Calibrite or DataColor) in the frame for reference. Once done, you can create a custom colour profile by dragging a box over the colour checker, then tweak it to fit the grid of colours. 

This is the sort of feature that will be of great benefit to some photographers, while completely overlooked by others. I think it’s brilliant. For those who need accurate colours, it may well be a workflow gamechanger.

LUTs

Invaluable to video editors, LUTs (Colour Lookup tables) are increasingly being used in photo editing. If you’re unfamiliar with LUTs, imagine all the colours in an image are laid out in a table with two columns, and each shade in the spectrum is transferred from column A to column B. This is effectively what LUTs do, and the great thing is, they’re universal. So you can go beyond the 17 initial offerings in PhotoLab 7 and import third party LUTs in the common .CUBE file format. These one-click colour treatments allow you to change the look and feel of your photos in an instant. The integration into PhotoLab is nicely done.

Black and white controls

Black and white has often seemed like a bit of an afterthought in previous versions of PhotoLab. Perhaps this is because the role is performed so ably by two sister apps, the excellent Silver Efex in the Nik collection or the bolt-on FilmPack 7 with its range of analogue-inspired presets. Now PhotoLab 7 has upped its monochrome game with several black and white rendering options and a Channel Mixer that lets you fine-tune the luminosity of six colour ranges. 

The Channel Mixer is a decent addition, but it would be better if there was some sort of on-image control for altering colours rather than just sliders (like in Lightroom), as pushing and pulling the sliders can often lead to image break-up. It also doesn’t allow for very large shifts in brightness, so it’s hard to – for instance – make a blue sky look dark and dramatic.

PhotoLibrary

The PhotoLab 7 interface is split into two distinct spaces accessible via buttons at the top left, PhotoLibrary and Customise. PhotoLibrary is where you can organise, rate, add keywords and sort your images. The PhotoLibrary workspace offers a simple structure that is largely dependent on how you organise folders on your hard disk. Unlike Adobe LIghtroom there’s no need to import images and no Catalog. The PhotoLibrary isn’t as comprehensive an image organiser as Lightroom, but it’s efficient and simple to use.

Customise workspace

Customise is the workspace where you enhance your photos. There are a series of panels on the right side under the headings Light, Colour, Detail, Geometry, Watermarks and Effects, and Local Adjustments. Within these you’ll find a host of powerful editing tools. These include the superb ClearView Plus which lets you cut through haze, and Smart Lighting for balancing high-contrast scenes. Along the top of the interface are several tools, including the ReTouch tool for removing objects and distractions. Separate windows open for Presets and Export controls. 

You can fully customise panels by dragging them around and docking them wherever you please (especially helpful if you have a dual monitor setup). Overall the interface is as clean and uncluttered as one would expect, and it shouldn’t take new users too long to find their way around it.

The raw workflow

While you can open and edit jpegs and tiffs into DxO PhotoLab – and get perfectly good results – it’s geared towards photographers who shoot in raw. Essentially you have more headroom when editing raw files than you do with jpegs, and more of a safety net if you need to correct exposure mistakes. The trade-off is that raws require an extra step in your workflow to process, so you need a quality raw processor to optimise your photos. In this regard, DxO PhotoLab is superb. Thanks to its raw demosaicing and lens correction tools, it produces raws with an exceptional level of quality.

The PhotoLab workflow

Like similar raw editors, DxO PhotoLab 7 employs parametric editing. This means that when you make changes to an image, you’re not permanently altering the pixels within, rather you’re making alterations to how the image is previewed in the software. Changes are only ‘burnt in’ when the image is exported in another file format like a jpeg or a tiff. 

The parametric system of editing brings all kinds of benefits. Because the original image file remains independent, any changes can be adjusted or undone at any stage. It also makes it easy to batch-process a whole set of images or create Virtual Copies. These allow you to take a single image in different directions and, because these edits are saved as tiny sidecar data, there’s no need for memory-hogging copies of the original image file on your hard drive.

Optical corrections

When you first open a raw photo into DxO there are immediate signs that things are happening. You’ll see a list of Optic Module Correction Profiles pop up, with a suggestion to download them. These modules are created in the DxO lab through extensive testing of thousands of camera/lens combinations. This testing started 20 years ago so it includes a huge roster of older lenses, and the list is regularly updated with the newest lenses and camera bodies.

Each individual combination of camera and lens has its own characteristic optical flaws, and the modules are tailored to correct them. You only need to download once, then the correction is applied thereafter. As such, every raw image opened in PhotoLab 7 is automatically optimised, with distortion, chromatic aberration and vignetting corrected and sharpness enhanced. This is like a cheat code for your camera, making up for shortcomings like corner softness and fringing and producing a better image straight off the bat.

Revamped local adjustments

One of the key features of any image editor has to be local adjustments. The ability to isolate areas of an image with masks and make tonal changes to those areas is essential for crafting tonally balanced photos. In PhotoLab 7, we have a range of tools for targeting parts of the image. There’s a linear gradient for making straight transitional adjustments, brush and auto brush tools that let you paint over areas, and Control Points that intelligently isolate areas based on the pixel values within a circular or linear area.

Local Adjustments have been overhauled in PhotoLab 7. In previous versions the Control Point placed onto the image would expand to show all manner of tonal sliders in the ‘equaliser’, which could lead to a cluttered interface and obscure the image. Now the tools are listed in the Adjustments panel at top right, and after adding a control point the tonal sliders also appear in this panel, so you have a much cleaner view of the image and the adjustment being made. If you’re familiar with the previous system then this might take some getting used to, but overall I think it’s an improvement to the user experience.

New HSL local color adjustments

A headline new feature in PhotoLab 7, local HSL adjustments allow you to fine-tune specific colour ranges within your masks. After making a mask, you can choose from eight predefined colour ranges or adjust the wheel to define your own custom range, then tweak the hue, saturation and luminosity of the range. It’s a powerful, brilliantly designed tool that will be of benefit to those photographers who demand fine colour control.

Aside from the interface tweaks and HSL tool, there’s little difference between local adjustments in PhotoLab 7 and PhotoLab 6. In this regard the tools are not as advanced as Lightroom/Photoshop’s AI-powered masking, and Control Points are a Marmite feature that some find intuitive while others may struggle with. There are also some usability issues. The Auto Brush makes a mask that doesn’t reveal where the edge detection has occurred, which makes the tool rather useless.

There is also a new Luminosity Mask feature for local adjustments that lets you zero in on areas based on brightness, but somewhat irritatingly it’s only available to those who have purchased DxO FilmPack 7 (at £275 for the combined PhotoLab/FilmPack bundle). With its roster of fine analogue film effects, FilmPack seemingly has very little to do with luminosity masking. As such it’s hard to see this as anything other than a brazen attempt at upselling.

Worth upgrading from PhotoLab 6?

If you have PhotoLab 6 then you’ll already be well aware of the excellent editing tools on offer in DxO software, but with an upgrade cost of £109 to move from PhotoLab 6 to 7, is it worth it? For some, the revamped local adjustments and colour calibration tools will justify the cost, but if you’re happy with PhotoLab 6 and you don’t need the colour calibration tool then it might be worth waiting until the next version (or until DxO has one of its regular sales). 

What about if you own PhotoLab 5? There’s a big leap in features (DeepPrime XD for one) and a better user experience in PhotoLab 7 which justifies the upgrade price. Those who own PhotoLab versions 1-4 are out of luck as they do not have the option to upgrade, so will instead have to pay full whack for PhotoLab 7. It’s worth noting that if DxO continues this policy and only allows those with either of the previous two iterations to upgrade, those with PhotoLab 5 will not have the option to upgrade to PhotoLab 8 further down the line.

How does the price compare with the opposition?

The main competition to PhotoLab is Adobe Lightroom (subscription at $9.99/£9.98 per month). Many will prefer to pay once rather than for a monthly subscription, but if you’re thinking long term then you also need to consider the cost of upgrades. If you think you’ll be wanting to upgrade regularly to the latest PhotoLab – which usually comes out yearly – then the cost of Adobe’s Photographers package (which includes Lightroom and Photoshop) is cheaper and offers a depth of features that PhotoLab cannot match. Of course you could upgrade every other year and pay a bit less, or stick with PhotoLab 7 for the foreseeable, but then you wouldn’t get regular updates. 

For many, the big reason to use PhotoLab over Lightroom has long been for noise reduction. But now Lightroom has Denoise, the gap has narrowed and Adobe’s package – with its superior library tools – becomes more attractive. But the beauty of standalone programs like PhotoLab 7 is that you’re not locked into a subscription. You have a choice whether to upgrade or stick with a program you’re happy with.

The pared-down alternative: PureRaw 3

Perhaps recognising that the raw demosaicing, optical corrections and noise reduction features are the key strengths to their software, DxO also offers a simple package that combines all three in DxO PureRaw 3 ($129/£115). It can work as a standalone or as a Lightroom plugin. If you’re already locked in to Adobe Creative Suite then PhotoLab 7 is probably surplus to requirements, but PureRaw 3 is a worthy supplement.

PhotoLab 7: The Verdict

DxO PhotoLab 7 remains one of the very best raw editors. It will appeal to those photographers who value image quality above all else. 

The highlights are its lens corrections, raw demosaicing and DeepPrime XD, which is still the pinnacle of denoising technology. But these features are the same as in PhotoLab 6 and – however excellent – the newly added colour calibration, updated local adjustments and LUT functionality may not be enough to persuade current users to upgrade. 

It’s certainly not perfect. There’s the irritating omission of Luminosity Masks, underwhelming black and white tools, rudimentary photo organising, local adjustments that are starting to look a tad outdated, and a pricing structure that – depending on your needs – may not offer the best value for money.

All that being said, where it’s good, it is stupendously good. The key question for most photographers will always be this: which editor will allow me to craft the best possible image? In this regard, PhotoLab 7 has you covered.

Article by James Paterson, patersonphotos.com

Related reading:

• Latest DxO updates boost colour-editing choices
• Dxo PhotoLab Elite 6 review
• Advancing your image editing with Color Efex Pro from the Nik Collection by DxO

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Photoshop has been at the forefront of digital imaging for 33 years, and remains one of the best image editors available. The breadth of features, cutting-edge AI tricks and industry standard tools put it at the top of the image-editing pile. But it’s a pile that gets better every year.

Adobe Photoshop 25.4 at a glance

• The industry standard photo editing program used by professionals and amateurs
• Incredible depth of image editing and graphic design tools
• Includes Camera Raw as a raw editor (as well as Lightroom)
• Subscription model at $9.99/£9.98 per month for the Creative Cloud Photography Plan 
• Regular updates and cutting edge AI tools
• Mac or Windows

Photoshop has stiff competition from other excellent tools like Affinity Photo, DxO PhotoLab and Capture One, which all – unlike Adobe – offer a one-off purchase rather than a subscription-only model.

The subscription model may divide opinion but it does mean updates are included, and Adobe regularly comes up with the goods in this department. The most recent updates include Generative Fill and Expand, two tools that harness the power of generative AI to create objects, images and extra details. New Lens Blur and Point Color features have also been added to Camera Raw (and Lightroom). 

Recently we’ve also been treated to Denoise, a vast improvement over previous noise tools, and the excellent Remove tool, which allows you to retouch with the power of generative AI. Then there’s the regularly expanded Neural Filters, constant updates to Photoshop on iPad, improvements to AI-powered masking and selection tools, plus continuing support for the newest cameras. It’s a genuinely exciting time for image-editing, and whenever Adobe releases a Photoshop update there’s usually something to get excited about.

Photoshop CC – Generative Fill

The marquee new feature in Photoshop v25 is Generative Fill. Powered by Adobe Firefly, this is Photoshop’s answer to generative AI tools like MidJourney and Dall-E. With it, we can generate content from within Photoshop by typing text prompts. It’s a text-to-image tool that lets your imagination run wild. But the really interesting part is how Photoshop lets us integrate generative AI with our photos. Adobe’s approach to AI is such that, rather than generating images from scratch, the emphasis is instead on augmenting our own images with AI-generated content. 

To do so, we make a selection with the Lasso tool over part of an image then type a prompt into the handy new Contextual Taskbar to generate AI content. The shape of the selection has an impact on the fill, so you can be precise about which areas are included. Once done, you can choose from three variations, generate again or refine your text prompt for more variations.

Photoshop CC – Generative Expand

Generative Expand could be one of the few generative AI tools that photographers truly embrace. It lets us expand outside the bounds of our original frame, generating new pixels based on the original content of the photo. If you’ve ever wanted to tweak a crop, allow extra room to correct a wonky frame or create negative space for text then Generative Expand can be very useful. In my tests it does an excellent job at recognising the content of the image and adding similar content around the edges.

Photoshop CC – Content Credentials

Whether we like it or not, generative AI is here to stay. In an era of deep fakes, Adobe is spearheading a system of use that builds trust into the AI process through its Content Credentials initiative. Any AI content created in Photoshop is automatically tagged in the image metadata (you can check whether an image has Photoshop-generated AI content by uploading it to contentcredentials.org).

What’s more, Photoshop’s AI tools are trained on the Adobe Stock library so, unlike many other AI tools, it doesn’t harvest intellectual property without the creator’s consent. Photoshop also imposes restrictions on copyrighted material, and any prompts for offensive content are denied. Contrast all this with the questionable data-scraping of internet images by MidJourney, or the repugnant NSFW deep-fakes of the open source Stable Diffusion, and it amounts to an approach that respects artists and photographers while responsibly pushing the boundaries of digital imaging.

Photoshop CC – Retouching and the Remove tool

To ‘Photoshop’ has long been common parlance for retouching and airbrushing. In this regard, Photoshop’s array of retouching tools are the best there is. With tools like Content-Aware Fill and Spot Removal you can remove objects and clean up photos with ease. The newest retouching tool is the AI-powered Remove tool. It’s simple to use and does a fantastic job at removing unwanted objects from scenes, although it’s not a panacea for all retouching needs, and you’ll often need to finish off with manual tools like the Clone or Patch tool.

Photoshop CC – Adobe Camera Raw

Adobe Camera Raw is Photoshop’s raw processing companion. When you open a raw photo in Photoshop it automatically opens in Camera Raw, where you can make initial raw edits before opening into Photoshop (if you need to). Camera Raw is, in its own way, as powerful and useful as Photoshop. With each update it gets better, and many of us now find we spend more time editing in Camera Raw or Lightroom (which has near-identical tools in its Develop Module) than we do in the main Photoshop interface. 

This is because Camera Raw offers precisely the kind of tools that photographers regularly need, and – unlike Photoshop – very little else. We can crop, boost colours, make local adjustments, sharpen and more, all within a non-destructive workflow that means every setting can be changed at any time. Newer tools like the AI-powered sky, subject and people masking make local adjustments quick and easy, and the Denoise tool works wonders on noisy, high ISO images. The latest updates have brought us Lens Blur for depth of field effects, and Point Color for fine colour adjustments. There’s also a brilliant new HDR mode for viewing and editing images, which is a gamechanger for those with HDR displays.

The Lens Blur feature in Camera Raw creates a depth map and adds realistic-looking blur, with fall-off in front and behind the ‘point of focus’. It’s ‘early access’ so not yet finished, but it can be very effective for creating a shallow depth of field effect. 

Those with HDR displays can now view and edit their images in HDR in Camera Raw and Lightroom. This offers up to four stops of extra brightness, which can reveal incredible highlight detail. Raws and HDR images pop out of the screen in a way that has to be seen to be believed. Viewing and editing images in HDR really is a transformative experience, and the standard view suddenly seems rather flat and dull by comparison.

Photoshop CC – Denoise

Noise reducing tools have come a long way in the last few years. Tools like DxO’s superb DeepPrime XD and Topaz DeNoise AI have previously bettered anything Photoshop and Lightroom could offer. But now they have Denoise.

Denoise is one of those game-changing tools that could impact not just how you edit your photos, but also how you take them. It employs AI to clean up image noise, and it does so to an astonishing degree. As such, it’s brilliant for clearing up high ISO photos. If you’re ever worried about your ISO creeping upwards while out shooting, it’s reassuring to know that Denoise can help clean things up later. Try it out on a photo taken at 12,800 ISO and you’re likely to be amazed at the clean, detailed image that it produces. It perhaps can’t top the brilliant DeepPrime XD from DxO PhotoLab 7. But in most instances it’s only pixel-peepers who will notice.

Photoshop CC – Powerful selection tools

Adobe is streets ahead of the competition in terms of intelligent selection and masking tools. These kinds of tools let us isolate parts of an image to make a cutout or perform a local tonal adjustment. In Photoshop you have the brilliant Object Selection tool, an AI-powered tool that lets you select objects with a single click. Similarly, there’s the Select Subject and Select Sky command, as well as the Refine tools and Hair Refinement that let you further improve your selections. Even if these tools don’t yield perfect results every time they often get you 90% of the way there, which saves you bags of time. 

Perhaps even more useful for photographers interested in subtle enhancements are the masking tools found in Camera Raw and Lightroom. Similar to Photoshop’s AI selection tools, these let you instantly make a mask to isolate a subject, sky or background, or parts of a person like the skin, hair or clothes. Once done, you can make a series of non-destructive tonal edits to enhance the area, like boosting the colours in the subject or darkening a backdrop. You can also create Adaptive Presets that automatically work over different parts of photos like skies or faces.

Photoshop CC – Neural Filters

Photoshop is such a large program that some areas of it have remained untouched for decades, while others see constant improvements and upgrades. For instance, Photoshop’s Filter Gallery (Filter > Filter Gallery) looks pretty much the same as it did in 2010. By contrast, the recently introduced Neural Filters are regularly added to and enhanced.

Neural Filters employ AI to alter or enhance images in a variety of ways. Most of these filters use AI-powered subject or object selection in order to recognise and enhance parts of an image, like a face or a sky. Perhaps the most impressive is the Photo Restoration and Colorise filters. The former automatically cleans up old photos and damaged prints, while the latter applies a nahd-coloured effect to black and white images. Alongside these are the Super Zoom and JPEG Artifacts Removal tools, which can be useful for upsizing and clearing up low quality photos. 

Adobe Photoshop CC – Verdict

Adobe Photoshop keeps getting better and better. The implementation of generative AI feels well thought out, working in harmony with the photography process rather than attempting to replace it with prompt-ography. The new tools can speed up the editing workflow and enable you to take your images wherever your imagination desires. However, it’s not all perfect. Generative Fill would have seemed astonishing a couple of years ago, but in the fast-paced area of generative AI the results aren’t always as good as what can be achieved in other image generators.

The main criticism – if it is a criticism at all – aimed at Photoshop is that for many users it is overkill. Photographers may find that they can do everything they need to in other non-subscription programs like DxO Photolab, CaptureOne, Affinity Photo or even the free GIMP.  There’s also Photoshop Elements, the pared-down, beginner-friendly and cheaper cousin to Photoshop. But none of these are as slick, feature-rich and cutting-edge as Photoshop. 

Affinity Photo – with its layers-based workflow, Personas and feature set – is the most similar offering to Photoshop and great value at £67.99, but its raw editing tools are basic compared to Camera Raw. DxO Photolab and CaptureOne both offer exceptional raw processing, but can’t match Photoshop for its depth of features, AI tools and layers-based workflow. Luminar AI has innovative AI features, but results can look overcooked.

Yes, Photoshop will be overkill for some users and the learning curve can be steep, but at $9.98/£9.99 a month for the Photography Plan – which includes Photoshop CC, Lightroom Classic, Lightroom CC, Adobe Bridge, Photoshop iPad, Lightroom Mobile, 20 GB of cloud storage, Adobe Portfolio and regular updates to all – you have very good value for money and an entire ecosystem of image editing tools.

Whether it’s the right choice for you depends on how much you’re willing to spend, if you think you need the wealth of features, and if you can commit to learning them. The gap between other image-editing programs and Photoshop is closer than ever, but if you want the best, Photoshop is the only choice.

Article by James Paterson, patersonphotos.com

Related reading:

• Are Adobe Camera Raw and Bridge dead?
• Is Photoshop Generative Fill good or bad for photographers?
• Lightroom vs Photoshop – which is best for photo editing?
• How to use Photoshop Actions for a faster workflow

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The post Adobe Photoshop CC Review – still the best? appeared first on Amateur Photographer.

Be aware that DxO has recently released a Nik Collection version 7 to supercede this 6 collection. Note, however, that they have removed Nik Perspective from this release, to the consternation of many users.

Nik Collection 6 at a glance :

• $149 / £135 for three lifetime licences. Upgrade $79 / £69
• Mac and Windows compatible
• U-point technology for precise local adjustments 
• New Control lines tool
• New last used edits feature
• Integrates with Photoshop, Lightroom and Affinity Photo
• Nik Sharpener and HDR Efex now updated
• 30-day free trial available
• www.dxo.com

Introducing the Nik Collection 6

The Nik Collection 6 suite includes eight plug-ins – available for Windows and macOS – for Adobe Phtoshop, Adobe Lightroom, DxO Photo Lab and Affinity Photo. The palette shown below is what you see in the Photoshop workspace. If you prefer, they also function as standalone apps, but individual plug-ins are not available to buy on their own.

The collection is available to buy outright for $149 / £135, or for existing Nik owners the upgrade price is $79 / £69.

The license allows the software to be installed on three computers. There’s no subscription option.

See the different DxO licences and packages

What are the 8 different DxO Nik plugins?

• Nik 6 Dfine: Removes digital noise exactly where required, locally or globally, without destroying detail
• Nik 6 Viveza: Lets you quickly shape colour and manipulate tones
• Nik 6 Perspective: Fix perspective and distortion for geometric perfection or creative effects such as miniature
• Nik 6 HDR: Two tools, to work with a single image or multiple images to produce one high dynamic-range image
• Nik 6 Color Efex: Control color, tone, contrast, and more with a vast collection of editable filters
• Nik 6 Analog Efex: Enjoy analog film effects with this plug-in
• Nik 6 Silver Efex: For excellent black & white photo conversions with film profiles, coloured filter effects and much, much more
• Nik Sharpener 6: Comprises two components: Presharpener for enhancing raws and Output Sharpener for controllable sharpening for display and printing among the options

Who are DxO Labs?

DxO Labs is world-renowned for its optic correction modules, with over 80,000 camera/lens combinations in its database. But it also has an impressive software portfolio: PhotoLab, a capable editing app; PureRaw, a cutting edge denoising program for camera raws; and the Nik Collection, a suite of powerful creative and technical apps.

DxO acquired the Nik Collection from Google in 2017. But its history goes back to 2009, when software firm Nik bundled its imaging plugins Dfine, Viveza, Color Efex Pro, Silver Efex Pro and Sharpener Pro into a single suite; the Ultimate Edition of these apps sold for $599.95. Google bought Nik Software in 2012, and the Google Nik Collection was marketed for a more affordable $149.

It was made even more accessible in 2016 when Google offered the whole package as a free download, and not surprisingly its popularity soared. This was fuelled by the fact that the plug-ins were really very good; Silver Efex Pro being the standout performer with its superb black & white conversion skills and an extensive bank of legacy film profiles.

X-E3 · f/11 · 1/300s · 18mm · ISO250

When DxO acquired the portfolio, it was put on sale as the Nik Collection 2018. For $69/£59 you got seven plug-ins: Analog Efex Pro 2, Color Efex Pro 4, Dfine 2, HDR Efex Pro 2, Sharpener Pro 3, Silver Efex Pro 2 and Viveza 2. Since then, we’ve seen DxO apply its development skills and each update was brought significant improvements and workflow tweaks. In 2020’s Nik Collection 3, the headline was the addition of Perspective Efex; the following year in Collection 4 we saw updates to Viveza and Silver Efex; and in 2022, Color Efex and Analog Efex were redesigned for Collection 5. 

Nik Collection 6: Features

This brings us right up to date with Collection 6. Three of the eight apps – Color Efex, Dfine and Perspective Efex – have acquired new features and improved functionality. Specifically, Color Efex gains a useful new Hue/Saturation/Luminance (HSL) slider; Dfine has had an overhaul to its user interface and also now allows users to save denoising profiles; while Perspective Efex gains the powerful ReShape tool previously seen in DxO Viewpoint 4.

Recently, Sharpener and HDR Efex have enjoyed major updates with refreshed interfaces that match the other plug-ins and gained new features. Sharpener allows you to target sharpness where needed with U Point technology while HDR Efex works with single or multiple images, also has U Point technology for local fine-tuning and there’s a choice of presets too.

While each plug-in can be used a standalone app, they can also be used without quitting out of DxO Photolab, Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, Lightroom Classic and Affinity Photo. All this comes at $149 / £135 for three lifetime licences while owners of previous collections can upgrade for $79 / £69.

Control yourself

One of Nik’s standout editing tools is its U Point technology with Control Points, which enable precise and easily controllable adjustments to images. In Collection 6, U Point technology has seen comprehensive upgrades and the latest Control Points enable users to make edits with greater accuracy than ever. There’s also a completely new tool, Control Lines. 

Digging into the detail, the key takeaways of the improved U Point technology are: Control Point diffusion allows greater control of the strength and style of adjustments; Control Lines brings the power of Control Points to linear gradients; Control Points and Control Lines can now be inverted; and both tools can be used with Color Selectively sliders for specific alterations. 

GFX 50R · f/1 · 1/60s · ISO400

Pre-update, Control Points could be placed on any part of the image with the click of the mouse, and the circular area resized to suit the area to be adjusted and then settings could be tweaked in real-time to fine-tune brightness, contrast and colour. It was also easy to duplicate Control Points and you could use as many as required to achieve the desired effect across a larger area and they can be saved along with other changes as a preset. At the other extreme, a small Control Point can improve details within the picture.

Post-update, all that editing control is still there, but the Collection 6 brings significant benefits. Control Points are still circular but now a Diffusion slider allows you to feather the mask. This slider’s default setting is 100, ie maximum diffusion, and to check the masking effect there’s a Show/Hide mask option. 

The new U Point tool – Control Lines

Completely new to Collection 6 is a U Point tool called Control Lines. They have the precision of Control Points but the functionality of a linear gradient. When you need to darken a pale sky or brighten a dark foreground this tool will pay for itself in no time. Previously, to darken a large area you had to use several Control Points close together, slightly overlapping and sometimes the effect could be patchy. Control Lines solves that problem and they can be dragged across the image at any angle and the depth of the working area can be adjusted to suit the area you want to alter. 

On complex edits with multiple Control Point/Lines in play, each mask you add can be named (sky, face etc), grouped together and switched on and off which makes workflow easier when you’re fine-tuning the image. Plus, all the masks and other adjustments you make can be saved as named presets for future use. If you forget to create a preset, the last 15 edits including any Control Points/Lines are available with a single click. The Last edit feature is available in Analog Efex, Color Efex, Silver Efex and Viveza. For fully non-destructive editing in Photoshop you can turn your edits into a Smart Object at any stage within the plug-in. 

GFX 50R · f/8 · 1/12s · 23mm · ISO400

I love using U Point tools, but it bugs me that the pull handles of the selective adjustment sliders attached to each Control Point/Line are too small and you have to be very precise with the mouse click to grab hold of them. That said, the sliders in the adjustments interface do the same job, although the process is then marginally slower. 

U Point technology is just one of the suite’s headline features which is why I have concentrated on its skills, but there is so much more, especially the incredible selection of presets to get creative with. Whether you use presets as they are or use them as starting points and then tinker from there, there’s the opportunity to develop an individual style and that’s a very good thing.

Finding your way around a new software is always a challenge and here, with eight plug-ins, the learning curve is perhaps steeper than usual. That said, there’s a commonality in the interfaces that does make life easier as you go from app to app. Without exception, the apps work very well and after a few weeks spent with the Collection, my workflow got faster and faster, thanks to time invested early on playing and creating some presets. Then I could import several similar images at a time from Lightroom into the plug-in and process batches at a time.

Nik 6 Color Efex – Fun with colours

Nik 6 Color Efex is a powerful tool with huge potential and there’s not much that it can’t achieve. On the left side of the interface, there are 55 preset filters grouped together in 19 categories, so many filters appear more than once. If anything, I feel there are too many preset filters and, at least to start with, the choice is daunting. Of course, it is true that not every filter will appeal, so you’ll soon narrow them down to those useful for your photography.

GFX 50R · f/22 · 1/100s · 120mm · ISO200

Once a filter is selected, the parameters appear on the right side where they can be adjusted. If you find a filter is not to your liking, it can be deleted for another attempt. The tools and masks used can be saved as a preset and the Last edit panel stores the used tools for the past 15 previous edits.

GFX 50R · f/22 · 1/100s · 120mm · ISO200

Using Nik 6 Silver Efex

Silver Efex is an excellent and very powerful black & white converter. The original raw here was captured at a TimeLine Events shoot at Didcot Railway centre using a Fujifilm GFX 50R. 

GFX 50R · f/6.4 · 1/125s · 38.2mm · ISO400

GFX 50R · f/6.4 · 1/125s · 38.2mm · ISO400

I took the original raw image straight into Nik Silver Efex without any adjustments. I looked through the presets on the left side of the interface until I found one I liked. In this case I settled on 015 Full dynamic (harsh) which tonally lifted the whole image but especially the shadows and left me with just the highlights to work on.

For the sky, I used a Control Line and starting from the top, I dragged it to overlap the loco and used the brightness and highlight sliders to give the required look. 

The area around the right funnel was a tad too dark while the re-enactor looked too pale, so I resolved those issues with a couple of Control Points. The effect of a Control Point varies depending on where it’s sitting so move it around the area you want to affect and when you have it in the right place, use the Shadow, Highlight and Brightness sliders to tweak the result.

Nik Collection 6: Verdict

Committing to buying a suite of eight individual apps of disparate skills will not appeal to everyone. I loved using Silver Efex, Color Efex and Viveza, and I reckon Perspective and Analog Efex are worthwhile apps too. Personally, I have no need for Dfine because I use DxO’s PureRaw; and HDR Efex and Sharpener I probably wouldn’t use because I’m happy with Photoshop/Lightroom. That’s potentially three out of eight apps redundant from my perspective.

If you did some simple arithmetic: eight apps at $149 / £135 is less than $20 / £20 each, but five apps works out at less than $30 / £30 each. That is still great value and Silver Efex is easily worth that, but the value for money calculation will vary from person to person and you need to factor this into your buying decision. Perhaps Nik should offer individual apps or apps in packages, ie Color Efex and Silver Efex together.

When all is said and done, however, it is what it is and the Nik Collection 6 costs $149 / £135 for a lifetime licence and that is very decent value. It is a powerful set of plug-ins with huge potential and the latest handling improvements with Control Points and the addition of Control Lines enhances its overall appeal.

A fully functional 30-day trial version is available, so that’s the place to start if you want to try the Collection for yourself.

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PhotoLab 6 Elite at a glance:

• Raw workflow software
• Mac and Windows
• Features DxO’s DeepPRIME science
• Elite edition, $219, £199, outright purchase
• Essential edition, $139, £128, outright purchase
• DeepPRIME XD, Elite only
• 30-day trial version available
• www.dxo.com

DxO, the company with PureRaw and the Nik Collection in its stable, has revamped its flagship editing and workflow software. The updates to PhotoLab v6.5.1 from the previous version aren’t huge but they are significant you want the best image quality, especially from high ISO images.

Photo editing is advancing quickly with the introduction of AI technologies. DxO uses AI for its renowned denoising technologies, but rival Adobe is going a whole lot. further with AI masking and AI Generative Fill and Generative Expand features. But if your focus is on image quality and control rather than novelty and special effects, DxO PhotoLab has a lot to offer.

DxO PhotoLab is a combined image browser, raw processor and photo editor, combining basic image organizing tools – not, perhaps, in the same league as Lightroom’s but functional enough – with probably the best raw demosaicing and denoising technology available in any software. The denoising technology journey began with DxO Prime and that evolved to the even more effective DeepPRIME, and those skills were available in PhotoLab 5. In PhotoLab 6, the technology has been advanced further with the addition of DeepPRIME XD (eXtreme Detail) and that technology is also now available in DxO’s dedicated denoising software, PureRaw 3.

As a regular and keen user of DeepPRIME, I was keen to check out the benefits of XD, especially as DxO made that mode fully compatible with Fujifilm X-Trans CMOS sensors in v6.4. In v6.5.1 the software now works with Fujifilm’s most recent fifth generation models, the X-H2, X-H2S and X-T5.

Before getting to the test, I should first cover the other key changes in version 6 and also say that PhotoLab 6 is fully supported by DxO’s renowned Optic Module correction profiles that enhance sharpness and cure distortion, vignetting and chromatic aberrations. Thousands of camera/lens combinations are available. What’s significant is that the DxO profiles are also calibrated to correct for lens softness near the edges of the frame, and the fact that PhotoLab can crop to the full captured image area, which is often slightly larger than the default image crop in regular processing software.

DxO has reengineered its colour processing algorithms and there is a new extended working colour space called DxO Wide Gamut with a broader colour range than its Classic colour space. This new working space has been designed to accommodate the widest possible colour range so that no colours are lost or clipped during processing. An addition for v6.4 is the ability to use DxO Wide Gamut and simulate papers and inks when soft proofing. You can now check how images look in with the profiles that you normally use for home or lab printing with Relative and Perceptual intents available too.

In any workflow, the odds are you will need to clone out the odd crisp packet, sensor spot or heal skin blemishes. DxO has a ReTouch tool (formerly called the Repair tool) to help you fulfil those needs. Essentially, the tool lets you perform complex cloning and healing tasks with fine-tunable brushes that can modified, flipped and rescaled. This means you can do more tidying up without having to go beyond PhotoLab.

Finally, to enhance its workflow credentials PhotoLab 6 has colour labels for easier file management, a good search facility, extended range of EXIF and IPTC tags, and an improved projects feature to help you organise pictures more efficiently.

PhotoLab 6 Elite: Interface

DxO Photolab 6. Image credit: Will Cheung.

The clean looking interface has two tabs in the top left corner, Photo Library and Customise. This is where the editing takes place. There’s a large central area for the main image, thumbnails in an image browser below that can be undocked and panels on the left and right sides.

In Photo Library mode, there’s folders, project and recent searches on the left. We have metadata, keywording and IPTC fields on the right and these can be moved around to suit.

The projects feature is a good place to start the review given its prominence in the workflow. PhotoLab does not support sub-folders. The reason for this, DxO tells me, is that it would be too processor intensive. However, the option would enhance the software’s appeal.

I use an Adobe Lightroom-based workflow which does have the option of supporting sub folders. I name and date the parent folder. Inside are folders for Raws, TIFFs, web images, images for print and work in progress. It is a shallow folder structure but not compatible with DxO because you need to click on each folder directly to see what is inside.

The plus side of the DxO approach is that there’s no need to move or import images into the software to view and work on them. Click on a folder with images and the software loads files and produces thumbnails which it does at varying speeds depending on the number and size of files.

I did this test on a M1 MacMini with 16GB RAM using image files from a range of cameras. With a folder of over 400 Canon EOS R5 full-size Raws it took a little while and of course it was the same with a folder of Raws from a Fujifilm GFX100S. As you use the scroll bar to navigate through files, the thumbnails are steadily updated.

Initially, as you click on images you will see dialogue box telling you that DxO Optics modules are missing with a download button for the suitable camera/lens profile. These profiles will correct shortcomings identified by DxO’s tests going back nearly 20 years.

Many thousands of camera and lens combinations have been tested. So, if your kit suffers from uneven lighting or distortion, the DxO profiles will resolve them at a click of a mouse. You only have to download each profile once. It takes no time at all and means images are automatically corrected when loaded.

PhotoLab 6 Elite: lens corrections

Every camera/lens combination has some form of shortcoming, however minor, and correction profiles in editing software can account for these. Distortion, vignetting and chromatic aberrations are the usual things cured, but DxO goes further with lens softness corrections to counteract lens edge softness.

DxO’s kit database is huge and dates back nearly 20 years and it’s extensive with newer kit too. This is a screengrab of correction DxO Optics modules for the OM System OM-1 and you can see it’s impressive with options for Raw and JPEG images too.

Once downloaded into PhotoLab 6, profiles are applied automatically when images shot with that particular camera/lens pairing is detected.

Auto correct panel. Image credit: Will Cheung.

The PhotoLab 6 browser panel displays the contents of folders as thumbnails, but not the contents of sub-folders. The Project facility, equivalent to ‘Albums’ in other programs, does offer a workaround. In the Photo Library module, on the left side is a Projects tab, and it’s possible to organize Projects into groups rather than as a single long list.

Of course, before adding images to projects, you need to identify them unless you select the entire folder’s contents. Images can be star rated by using keys 1-5. They can also be picked (hit p key), unpicked (u) or chosen for deletion (x). Handily, these are the same keys used in Lightroom for flagging up shots.

PhotoLab 6 now has the choice of seven colour labels. Right clicking on a thumbnail in the browser brings up a long list of rating options.

Of course, you can funnel down what images are on show, be that with star rating, pick/delete, colour labels and more. Once you have your pictures rated, keyworded and picked you can create projects or add selected files to existing projects. There are options of how you do this, plus you can just drag and drop thumbnails into project folders. Images are added to projects as virtual copies, so no files are moved; it’s like Lightroom’s collections feature.

It is a reasonably quick process but if you have prospective project images across several folders, this takes time. Especially if you have large numbers of files in each folder.

However, once loaded into a project they will be there ready for you the next time you fire up the software. It’s worth noting that if you make any edits to one project image the same changes will apply to the same image in other projects and that is a good thing. If you prefer for this not to happen, a new virtual copy is needed for each project.

Images are shown in the browser that sits at the base of the interface and the browser window can be varied in size to make the working image bigger or smaller. Preview size can be adjusted too. The browser can be undocked to float on one screen or relocated in dual monitor set-ups. This means the image you’re working on is much bigger on screen.

PhotoLab 6 Elite: workspace options

In Customise there’s the choice of standard or advanced workspaces or you can create and save your own. In the default options, the central area is again for the image being worked on with a row of thumbnails running across the base and again this browser can be undocked. In the left dock are four palettes: histogram, move/zoom, history and preset editor. Running down the right side are the specific editing palettes including Detail where the DxO denoising feature sits.

Clicking on a palette header means you can move the palette from one side of the interface to the other, change their running order or have them floating.

Features are brought into play by using a tiny virtual switch which sits to the left of the feature’s name. When on, the switch is blue and the name gets marginally brighter against a dark grey background. To be honest, while it is all very tasteful, the switch outline box and the feature names read out poorly when off. Lightroom uses a similar grey type out of darker grey background style and a similar font size, but it is more legible.

Of course, familiarity helps, and I soon learnt to click to the left of the feature name. However, I’d prefer a more user-friendly interface to make the whole editing process more enjoyable and less of a strain on the eyes, so it’s an aspect DxO should look into. For info, my BenQ 32in screen is just within touching distance and yes, I could move closer, but I prefer not to.

It’s on the right side of the customise workspace where all the editing action takes place with six icons taking you through image workflow and there is a great deal you can do in PhotoLab 6.

From left to right, the icons represent Light, Color, Detail, Geometry, Local Adjustments and Watermarks & Effects and relevant palette items appear as you click each icon. In the palette drop down menu there is the option of creating your own user palettes that can be docked or left floating, and that is a worthwhile feature and good to use.

Another potentially useful addition would be a quick way of turning on or off every (or a selected few) feature in a palette. As it stands, you have to turn on/off features as you go from image to image. It is possible to copy and paste corrections from one image to others but this is not the same. Having to turn features on/off is time consuming and it would make sense to me if features such as Exposure Compensation were active all the time.

In the software’s preferences you can set what you want PhotoLab 6 to do when new Raws or RGB images are imported into the software. I went for 1 – DXO Standard and all the others you can view anyway by clicking on the Presets button top right of the workspace and scrolling through the many options if you prefer a starting point for your adjustments.

PhotoLab 6 Elite: Noise control

It is in the Detail palette where you find the DxO’s denoising technologies Prime, DeepPRIME and DeepPRIME XD. The new ReTouch tool is in the Detail palette too.

Under the four quality/Prime options there is a small preview window that shows an area of the image. As you click on each of the four denoise options and you’ll see a preview.

High Quality does little in respect of digital noise reduction, so I’ll concentrate on the three Prime options. There are controls to fine tune the effect in each mode. In DeepPRIME and DeepPRIME XD there is Luminance (0-100 with 40 the default), Dead Pixels (0-100 with 24 the default) and Noise model (-100 to 100 with 0 the default).

For my tests I used a selection of Raws from different cameras including Canon EOS R, Fujifilm X and G-series, Olympus and Nikon DSLR and Z cameras to test DeepPRIME and DeepPRIME XD. Mostly these were high ISO shots, but I used some lower speed ones too.

Nikon D810 with a 24-120mm f/4 lens, exposure 1/50sec at f/4 and ISO 3200. Image credit: Will Cheung.

Street shooting and low light go hand in hand and software such as PhotoLab 6 can transform a grainy shot with poor detail into something very presentable indeed. Image credit: Will Cheung.

I tried the Noise mode at 0 and the two extremes but couldn’t see any difference in any of my test shots. I didn’t have any shots suffering greatly from dead pixels so left that feature at 0. As luminance is the factor affecting quality, I tried settings of 0, 20, 60, 80 and 100 as well as the default 40.

For timing tests, I used the same Nikon D810 Raw shot at ISO 6400 through each of the four options and exported to a DNG file. With no denoising it took six seconds. This increased to nine seconds in High quality, 26secs in Prime, 10secs in DeepPRIME and 31secs in DeepPRIME XD.

I didn’t expect DeepPRIME to be faster than Prime but that’s because the latter is processed using the computer’s CPU and the former takes advantage of GPU acceleration of Apple M1 chips and recent RTX graphics cards. The original Raw was 48MB and the four processed DNG files were 217MB each.

In my tests, DeepPRIME XD did take image quality to the next level. Notably this was the case in high ISO images while in others you had to venture deep into pixel peeping territory to see any benefit. By that I mean checking images at 200% because there was little difference at 100%. The benefit of DeepPRIME XD over DeepPRIME was not so much in the lowering of digital noise levels but the bringing out of fine detail even if this could be minimal.

If you’re making seriously large prints from extreme high ISO shots, particularly from older digital cameras, the benefit is worthwhile. With modern machines at ISO 800 or even 1600, the benefit is minimal. You might as well save time and use the DeepPRIME option which is excellent.

All in all, I found DxO good to use. There are some handling niggles, but no software is perfect. If you go on end result, I think the most quality conscious image-maker will be happy with this software’s all-round skills.

This shot went through a raft of workflow corrections before being sent to Viveza 3 to produce the final image. Nikon D850 with 24-120mm f/4 lens. Exposure was 1/20sec at f/6.3 and ISO 400. Image credit: Will Cheung.

PhotoLab 6 has a great deal going for it, especially its digital noise handling skills. Prime, DeepPRIME and DeepPRIME XD will improve most Raws. I did find the occasional Raw that didn’t benefit from PhotoLab’s skills, most notably pictures featuring very contrasty tonal transitions, where a halo was sometimes evident. However, most shots I tested including those taken at lower ISO speeds saw a very clear benefit.

The shot below was taken at a Steve Hackett gig was taken with an Olympus OM-D E-M5 Mark II with a 45-150mm lens at ISO 1600.

PhotoLab 6 does a great job of removing the digital noise and you may find that Prime is enough. Here, the difference between the Prime, DeepPRIME and DeepPRIME XD images is not obvious even at 200% magnification. However, if look very, very closely at the guitar rosette and the detail is clearer on the DeepPRIME XD shot.

Sample close-up. With no Prime (above left), with Prime (above right), with Deep Prime (below left) and with Deep Prime XD (below right). Image credit: Will Cheung.

PhotoLab 6 Elite: Prime benefits

DxO claims a up to 2.5EV quality benefit when DeepPRIME XD is applied. We checked that out with a sequence of shots taken with a Canon EOS R3 processing Raws through Adobe Lightroom with default noise reduction and DeepPRIME XD at a luminance value of 40.

With an ISO 6400 shot, a 2.5EV benefit means a DeepPRIME XD processed image should resemble an ISO 1000 shot and that’s what’s shown here. You can see that the DxO shot is impressive compared with the lower ISO shot. It’s cleaner in the sky area and the building detail is much crisper so the claimed benefit has more than a little merit.

ISO 1000 through Adobe Lightroom.

ISO 6400 through DeepPRIME XD. Image credit: Will Cheung.

PhotoLab 6 Elite: Verdict

The latest variant of DxO PhotoLab 6 Elite is an impressive and powerful software with huge potential. Even priced at $219/£199 for an outright purchase, I consider that remarkably good value for money considering what you get. There’s an awesome array of tools including ReTouch, ClearView Plus and Smart Lighting to enhance your images, and DxO Optics profiles to correct camera/lens flaws.

And we have left the best to last. Prime, DeepPRIME and DeepPRIME XD all do a great job when it comes to cleaning up and embellishing your shots, whether they are shot at medium or high ISO speeds. If you don’t have the budget to buy the Elite version, going for Essentials is still worthwhile because you get Prime and DeepPRIME. To be honest, the benefit in real terms of DeepPRIME XD over DeepPRIME aren’t huge.

If you need a software for noise reduction only, you can save money by buying DxO’s PureRaw 3 which sells at $129/£115. It has DeepPRIME XD, batch processing and extra control.

Of course, PhotoLab 6 is a much more complete workflow solution with powerful enhancement tools. It suits photographers of all genres and its superpowers with high ISO files adds an extra dimension. Not only will it help you make the most of the latest digital cameras, but it will also give your existing archive of high ISO shots a new lease of life. Highly recommended.

Further reading:

• Best software for noise reduction
• RAW Vs JPEG- Pros and Cons of raw and JPEG

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Adobe Photoshop 24.3 at a glance:

• Well-known photo editing and graphics program
• Features a wide ranging of tools for working with popular image formats
• Includes Camera Raw as a plug-in for raw processing
• Recent updates have included a wide range of AI tools
• Mac or Windows
• Subscription only
• Bundled with Lightroom for $9.99/£9.98 monthly (20Gb storage), or $19.99/£19.97 monthly (1Tb storage)
• Adobe.com

This is the default Photoshop Photography workspace but creating your own to suit your preferences is easy enough. Image credit: Will Cheung.

In the context of digital imaging, Adobe Photoshop has around for a very long time. Developed in 1987 and sold to Adobe in 1988, Photoshop soon became an integral app to many industries and the leading app for photographers as computers got more and more powerful and digital imaging evolved. Adobe added Photoshop to its Creative Suite and renamed it Photoshop CS in 2003. Its non-destructive editing power continued to be improved notably its compositing and selection skills.

In 2013 Adobe introduced its Creative Cloud subscription service and announced that Photoshop would no longer be available as an outright purchase. It’s fair that this move was not universally welcome, but 10 years later the CC subscription is still going strong. A major benefit of subscription is the fact that you always have the latest software at your disposal and Photoshop is regularly updated to support the latest cameras, iron out bugs, have performance enhancements and new features added.

Many subscribers access the program along with Adobe Lightroom as part of the Photography package – check out its recent Denoise AI updates, which are particularly welcome. Less experienced readers might also wish to try out the more beginner friendly Photoshop Elements and alternatively, If you’d rather not pay a subscription, check out our guides to the best subscription-free photo editing programs)

Adobe’s Photography subscription plan is the best value option for most photographers and content creators. For $9.99/£9.98 a month you get Photoshop (desktop and iPad), Lightroom (Classic, Mobile, cloud), Portfolio and 20GB cloud storage. If you need more storage and both softwares the price goes up to $19.99/£19.97 a month.

This review was done on a M1 Mac Mini using Photoshop v24.3 which was introduced in March 2023. This review includes some of the features introduced at various times over the past year. Highlights include the choice of Device or Cloud mode for Select Subject processing in August 2022 while in October we got automatic selections on hover, improvements to the Object Selection tool and the chance to share comments and collaborate with colleagues and clients. We’ve seen various neural filters too, including Landscape Mixer, Super Zoom and the Photo Restoration filter.

Adobe Photoshop: Share it

Share for Review is a Photoshop innovation that means you can share images and ask for comment without having to leave the app. How useful this feature is depends on what you do and how you like to work. It has time-saving potential for professionals double-checking that their work suits their clients or perhaps for an editorial team ensuring that the pictures match the words.

However, it is one of those features many enthusiast photographers might not appreciate initially, but use it a few times and they might wonder how they managed without it. For enthusiasts, being able to quickly elicit an opinion on their work from their mentor, friends or camera club members is potentially invaluable. Feedback goes straight into the Comments window in Photoshop. Go to Windows>Comments to have this feature working.

The latest Photoshop has the facility to share images with family, friends, colleagues and clients. Use Invite to Edit and they can even edit them.

To share an image, click on the Share button or use File>Edit>Share For Review, create a link which takes a few seconds and then you can invite people by email or share the created link on social media. Recipients do not need to be Adobe CC subscribers or to have Photoshop.

The latest update in the Share For Review workflow is the option of setting a password to limit access to your public review links. You can take the Share For Review feature further and actually send an image for colleagues, clients or fellow photographers to edit.

Go to File>Invite to Edit and the image is uploaded to the Creative Cloud and a link is created and shared in the same way as Share for Review. The recipient can now work on the image in Photoshop and either save it or download it onto their system. Only one person at a time can edit the shared image so if you have the image still open they will get a warning message but they can download a copy.

Adobe Photoshop 24.3: Object Selection tool

Photoshop had powerful selection and masking tools from early on and cleaning up images and image compositing have always been key benefits of the software. Adobe has continued developing and refining its tools to make selections and masks more accurate and easier to use and added popular features including Sky Replacement and Content-Aware Fill.

In recent times, Adobe has enhanced Lightroom by giving it impressive masking and selection tools making it perfectly feasible to produce excellent results. However, Photoshop and its advanced features deliver more accurate, even more controllable results.

The latest Photoshop version gives an improvement Object Selection tool with better object detection with more refined edges so there’s no further need to modify selections.

The Object Selection tool (short cut key W) is designed to speed up selection workflows. It first arrived in v21 and has seen various improvements since. Among them, in v23.4 preserving hair details was added; in v23.5 Select Subject Cloud offered finer selections; and in v24.2 there was improved object detection and refinement.

To select an object automatically tick the Object Finder box but before you hit Select Subject there are two options to consider: Device for speed or Cloud for more detailed results. Whichever method you use, the software does the work and you’ll see the familiar ‘marching ants’ around the detected object. Cloud does take literally a few seconds longer and on my test images this mode proved more accurate so is worth using.

If you don’t tick the Object Finder box, there is the choice of Rectangle or Lasso modes that you can drag around your target to make the selection.

In this example, Subject Detect showed the Cloud setting (right) gave a more accurate selection and took four seconds compared with half that time in Device mode. Image credit: Will Cheung

I tried the Object Selection tool with Subject Detect in Cloud mode on this studio portrait of model Carla Monaco. Hair is always a challenging subject to select but Photoshop did a very good job. There’s still work to be done but it is a very decent result achieved with a single click and in four seconds. Image credit: Will Cheung

Selections be modified in the Object Selection tool with the Options bar or use one of Photoshop’s other selection tools. Use the Shift key while using the tool to add to a selection or Alt (Mac)/Option (Windows) to subtract. The selection can be further tweaked using the Select and Mask workspace in the Object Selection toolbar.

Here you can use either Color Aware or Content Aware and then edge detection and other tools to fine-tune selections. Right-clicking on the image brings yet more options including Content-Aware Fill and Delete and Fill Selection, feather and selection inverse.

Adobe Photoshop 24.3: clean up your images quickly

The Object Detection tool can also remove unwanted clutter from your pictures quickly by drawing the lasso or rectangle across the object you want to remove, and the software then makes its selection. With selections you usually have to modify or feather the selection to avoid hard edges. Using this tool, Photoshop applies selection modifications automatically.

I tried the tool on a range of images. On this portrait shot at the Brighton Pride Festival, the streetlamp lurking in the background spoilt the composition. Removing the offending lamp can be done using the Clone Stamp tool but I thought it would be a good test for the Object Detection tool. With the Object selection tool active I used the lasso selection mode and drew a rough outline around the streetlamp. I did try the rectangle mode and that picked up the shoulder and more of the hair.

Taken at the Brighton Pride Festival a few years ago, the streetlamp in the background was an annoying distraction that I wanted removed.

Using the lasso tool within the Object Detection tool, I drew a rough line around the streetlamp and Photoshop made the selection which was pretty accurate.

The final result is what Photoshop managed automatically using the Object Detection tool, using the Shift and Delete keys to delete and fill. More editing work is needed for a seamless result, but Photoshop did a fine job quickly. Image credits: Will Cheung

Once selected with the lasso tool I hit Shift and the Delete key and Photoshop did the rest, replacing the lamp with sky. The result is good though not perfect but I didn’t expect that because I knew the strands of hair would be an issue. Nevertheless, it is pretty good result even when examined using the magnified view as shown above.

Adobe Photoshop 24.3: Photo Restoration neural filter, beta version

Photo Restoration is a new Neural filter launched in Photoshop v24.0. Go to Filters>Neural Filters and download the beta Photo Restoration filter. Open your target image, go to Filters>Neural Filters and click on the Photo Restoration filter’s switch. To test the filter, I used several old family snapshots that I had digitised using a flatbed scanner.

The filter’s default settings are Photo Enhancement at 50, Enhance Face at 60 and Scratch reduction is 0. Click on Adjustments and a drop-down menu of more adjustments is available.

I tried the Photo Restoration filter with various settings and the process took around a minute on a 15x10cm at 300ppi TIF file. The default settings are Photo Enhancement slider at 50, Enhance Face at 60 and Scratch Reduction at 0 and these do a fine job, but I couldn’t resist experimenting with the sliders. Scratch Reduction was definitely worth using and tidied up the old print well without looking too false. A setting within the range of 20-60 seemed best. Regarding the other two sliders, I found the best results were not too far from the defaults, ie the Photo Enhancement slider within the range of 50-80 and Enhance Face at 60-80.

Start image

The Photo Restoration Neural filter did a decent job with this old snapshot. The settings used were Photo Enhancement at 80, Enhance Face at 80 and Scratch reduction 20 Image credit: Will Cheung

To give an idea of the range of effects possible I put the start image through the restoration filter at different settings.
Top left: Default, Photo Enhancement at 50, Enhance Face at 60 and Scratch reduction 0
Top right : Photo Enhancement at 50, Enhance Face at 60 and Scratch reduction 60
Bottom left: Photo Enhancement at 80, Enhance Face at 80 and Scratch reduction 80
Bottom right: Photo Enhancement at 100, Enhance Face at 100 and Scratch reduction 100

Most people will have old family snapshots in a shoebox somewhere and many will be organised and have the most valuable prints digitised ready to clean up. Of course, repairing images takes time so Photoshop’s restoration filter will help you tidy up your precious snapshots efficiently. It works well and the benefit was obvious on the old prints I tried. The trick, as with most editing filters, is not to be aggressive with the sliders because that gives unnatural looking results, so the best advice is to take it easy.

Adobe Photoshop 24.3: Super Zoom

If you’re a keen nature photographer you’ll have a telephoto in your lens armoury, but it still might not be powerful enough to make a small, distant subject large in the frame. This is where having a high resolution camera is handy because you can crop into the original to produce a tighter composition without impacting too much on image quality while maintaining a useful file size, but there is a limit to how far you can do before the image starts to deteriorate.

You can now get specialist software such as Topaz’s Gigapixel AI that can upsize images with minimal quality loss. Photoshop’s solution is the Super Zoom neural filter – which is no longer a beta filter – that enables image files to be magnified by up to 4x, either as a whole or zoomed in.

In Photoshop, the filter is accessed via Filters>Neural filter> Super Zoom where the image can be magnified up to 4x. The filter has two ways of working. The image can be outputted as a new document, so the entire image is enlarged by the selected zoom ratio, or in layer mode where the magnified image sits as a new layer.

For this test I used an image of a greenfinch shot on the Canon EOS R5 at ISO 12,800. I started with layer mode and zoomed into the image by 2x and 4x where processing time took 4mins and 11 mins respectively.
The original file is a 9.2MB JPEG which opens out to 69.3×46.2cm at 300ppi. Use Super Zoom in the layer mode means the resulting file has two layers with the zoomed image having the same dimensions sitting on top of the original, so needs flattening before saving.

The original image was cropped to give the effect equivalent to a 4x zoom in the Super Zoom filter. File size is 517KB, 17.4×11.6cm at 300ppi.

This is the 2x zoomed image in the Super Zoom filter cropped to give the effect of the 4x zoom image. File size is 1.7MB, 34.2×22.8cm at 300ppi.

This was the image treated to a 4x magnification in the Super Zoom filter. File size is 5MB, 69.3×46.2cm at 300ppi.

The enlargements above show that the Super Zoom tool does a decent interpolation job and the 2x and 4x magnified image looks fine considering it is a big file of an image shot at ISO 12,800. Performing some noise reduction on the original image before putting it through the Super Zoom filter and using its image enhancement controls would obviously be a benefit.

In document mode, the process times were more or less the same and you just get a single-layer interpolated image of the whole frame. The 2x zoomed image opens out to 128×92.5cm while the 4x zoom is a massive 254x185cm – both at 300ppi – and the saved JPEGs at level 12 were 189MB and 518MB respectively. When I first tried to save the original 4x zoomed image, I got the warning that it had to be saved as a Large Document Format or psb file. Saving a copy as a JPEG got round this.

A full-frame image from the Canon EOS 20D.

Processed in Photoshop’s Super zoom (from left to right) 1x, 2x and 4x giving files measuring 3504×2336 pixels, 7008×4672 pixels and 14,016×9344 pixels. Files were enlarged by 100%, 50% and 25% respectively to give the same subject size on screen.

The Super Zoom filter deserves its place in Photoshop. While the high megapixel of current cameras means the need for upsizing for really big prints is not the issue it once was for most photographers, being able to crop into images and still have a big file is a real benefit. Super Zoom does this job pretty well. It also performs a good interpolation too when a bigger file is needed from a smaller original.

Adobe Photoshop 24.3: Verdict

Adobe Photoshop continues to go from strength to strength and, in my view, it remains the most powerful image editing software around. Indeed, it has more features than most photographers need and there are plenty of excellent and powerful software available for those who prefer not to give their business to Adobe. See here for our guide to the best subscription-free photo editing tools

All that said, $9.99/£9.98 a month for both Photoshop and Lightroom remain excellent value and a relatively small outlay for what you get. Lightroom is one of the best programs around for developing an efficient photo-editing workflow and its editing skills are only getting better. Meanwhile, Photoshop has incredible potential with its huge feature set that goes way beyond satisfying the needs of photographers. The subscription model might not suit everyone, but getting the combined power of both Photoshop and Lightroom at a reasonable monthly outlay is a huge asset for all serious photographers.

Further reading
How to use Photoshop Actions for a faster workflow
Best software for black and white editing
Best free photo-editing software
Best software for black & white editing
Adobe Lightroom Denoise – how does it compare?

The post Adobe Photoshop 24 review appeared first on Amateur Photographer.

• $129 / £115
• £69 for upgrade from version 1 or 2
• For Mac and PC
• Free 30-day trial available
• www.dxo.com/dxo-pureraw

Two years after its original launch, DxO’s PureRAW software is still unlike anything else on the market. Like its predecessors, the latest iteration, DxO PureRAW 3, takes camera raw files and converts them to DNG raw files for use in your favourite imaging software. Crucially, it does so while applying the firm’s impressive lens correction and noise reduction algorithms, which can give dramatically better final output compared to developing your files using Adobe software such as Lightroom or Camera Raw.

PureRAW 3 gains DxO’s DeepPRIME XD algorithm, which renders extra detail. Fujifilm X-H2S, XF100-400mm F4.5-5.6 R LM OIS WR at 400mm, 1/1000sec at f/5.6, ISO 640, 1.7x crop. Processed using DeepPrime XD. Image credit: Andy Westlake

Click on any sample image to see the full-resolution version

The 16-bit linear DNG files that PureRAW creates can still be adjusted in exactly the same way as the original camera raw files, in terms of white balance, colour and tonality. This allows you to get the benefit of DxO’s image processing expertise without changing your existing workflow.

For comparison, see our reviews of DxO PureRAW and DxO PureRAW2

DxO PureRAW 3: What’s new?

Compared to last year’s version, DxO PureRAW 3 comes with some significant updates. Firstly, it gains DxO’s latest DeepPRIME XD processing algorithm. The XD label indicates that this is designed deliver extra detail compared to the existing DeepPRIME, at the expense of longer processing times.

DxO PureRAW 3 adds the DeepPRIME XD processing algorithm, plus other new options. Image credit: Andy Westlake

The second major update concerns how lens aberration corrections are applied. Previously, you didn’t get a whole lot of control over this. But now, lens softness can be corrected across a choice of four levels; vignetting and chromatic aberration corrections can each be toggled on or off; and distortion correction can be applied with a choice of three cropping modes.

Thirdly, there’s a new file queueing system, which allows you to set up batches of raw files to be processed, with the option to re-prioritise them as you go along. So if you come across a file that you’d like to process immediately, it can be pushed up the order. This can be a handy option to have available, given that the penalty for PureRAW’s increased image quality lies in the sheer length of time it takes to process the camera raw files.

DxO PureRAW 3 now has a processing queue. Image credit: Andy Westlake

It’s also now possible to export your images as TIFF files, in a choice of 8-bit or 16-bit colour depths. This makes PureRAW 3 compatible with a wider range of image processing programs that don’t support DNG files. The interface has been cosmetically redesigned, too, with a cleaner look.

At $129 / £115 for a one-off licence, or £69 for users of previous versions to upgrade, DxO PureRAW 3 may look expensive for a program that turns your raw files into better raw files, but doesn’t produce finished output. However, with previous versions I concluded that it could easily represent money well spent. Let’s see if version 3 is a worthy update.

DxO PureRAW 3: summary of new features

• Adds DeepPRIME XD demosaicing / denoising algorithm
• Substantially increased control over lens corrections
• New file queuing system
• TIFF image output (8-bit or 16-bit)

How do you use DxO PureRAW 3?

PureRAW can be used in several different ways. Firstly, it can work as a standalone program, into which you import your raw files and then process them. Secondly, you can batch process files directly from the Windows desktop or Mac finder, with a choice of algorithms and output file types selectable, all without having to open the program itself. Lightroom users can even invoke PureRAW directly within the program, using the ‘Export – Process using DxO PureRAW 3’ command.

As the updates mainly affect the standalone program, I’m going to concentrate on that.

DxO PureRAW 3’s main screen shows a thumbnail view of files you’ve imported. Image credit: Andy Westlake

When you open PureRAW and import a set of images, it’ll first attempt to identify the cameras and lenses you used, and then ask you to download the requisite Optics Modules (which you only need to do once). DxO’s database is vast, so most combinations are covered, but it can take a little while for the latest products to be added via the monthly updates. With unsupported lenses, the software will still work, but you’ll end up with uncorrected images.

The first step is to download Optics Modules for the cameras and lenses you’ve used. Image credit: Andy Westlake

Select a file or files and click ‘Process Now’, and a window pops up prompting you to choose the processing method (High Quality, PRIME, DeepPRIME or DeepPRIME XD); the lens corrections you wish to apply, the output format (DNG, TIFF or JPG); and where the processed files should be saved. Alternatively, if you click the new ‘Add to Queue’ option, your files will get added to a queue that the program will work through progressively. Click on the ‘Show Queue’ button, and you can change the processing order simply by dragging batches up and down the list. It’s straightforward and easy to use.

Usefully, PureRAW 3 will automatically name its DNG files according to the processing algorithm used. However, it isn’t smart enough to do the same with lens corrections. Instead, if you queue up variants of an image with different combinations of corrections, by default they’ll be assigned the same filename and end up overwriting each other. So you need to make a point of using the File Renaming option, which is somewhat hidden away in the dialogue box. This is something DxO really needs to fix.

DxO’s file renaming dialogue is usually hidden, making it easy to miss. image credit: Andy Westlake

You can export the processed DNGs directly to Adobe Lightroom or Photoshop, and in the latter case, they’ll open in Camera Raw. Any settings you’ve previously applied to the raw files in terms of colour, white balance and tonality will be carried over. It’s also possible to export the original raw files alongside for comparison purposes.

DxO PureRAW 3: Which processing algorithm is best?

I compared PureRAW’s four algorithms using files from a variety of cameras across the full range of ISO settings. While HQ provides only a modest improvement over Adobe’s processing, I found that PRIME provides around a stop of improvement in terms of noise reduction, and DeepPRIME gives a similar step up again. DeepPRIME XD brings no further advantage at low or even moderately high ISOs, but comes into its own by enhancing detail at the very highest ISO settings.

Canon EOS R3 + RF 600mm F11 IS STM, 1/2000sec at f/11, ISO 25,600. Processed using Adobe Camera Raw only. Image credit: Andy Westlake

A good example is provided by a photo I shot of a mandarin duck using the Canon EOS R3 and RF 600mm F11 IS STM lens at ISO 25,600. Firstly, DxO’s HQ processing is only a little better than Adobe Camera Raw with its default noise reduction, which means it’s barely worth the effort:

DxO PureRAW HQ algorithm, 50% crop. Image credit: Andy Westlake

In comparison, PRIME is visibly more effective at suppressing noise, but it doesn’t really recover any more detail:

DxO PureRAW Prime algorithm, 50% crop. Image credit: Andy Westlake

However, DeepPRIME is a clear improvement, doing a superb job of rendering more detail without any noise penalty:

DxO PureRAW DeepPrime algorithm, 50% crop. Image credit: Andy Westlake

DeepPRIME XD is even better here, teasing out even more fine detail in the feathers. This is real detail, too, not invented texture; it’s visible in Adobe’s conversion, but right on the edge of what can be distinguished from noise. In other situations, though, DeepPRIME XD can look unnatural; for example, it can overly accentuate skin texture in portraits, which you really don’t want.

DxO PureRAW DeepPrime XD algorithm, 50% crop. Image credit: Andy Westlake

Overall, PureRAW will probably allow you to use ISO settings two stops higher than you’d previously have found acceptable. That’s a larger improvement than you’re likely to get from exchanging all your camera kit for the next sensor size up, which puts the price into perspective.

DxO PureRAW 3: Image processing time

The trade-off for PureRAW’s increased output quality is its processing time. It takes much, much longer to convert raw files to DNGs, than Adobe software does to convert the same files to finished JPEGs. As a result, you’ll probably want either to batch convert a set of files while you go off and do something else, or to convert only selected images when necessary.

Sony Alpha 7C, raw + Adobe Camera RAW, ISO 6400, 100% crop

Exactly how long PureRAW will take to process your files is dependent upon all sorts of factors – pixel count, image content, ISO, and the lens corrections required, plus of course your computer hardware. But for comparison purposes, I tested it using a set of 13 raw files of our studio scene from the 24MP Sony Alpha 7C, one for each ISO setting (50-204,800).

DxO PureRAW 3 gives cleaner images at 2 stops higher ISO than ACR, while maintaining a strong impression of detail. Sony Alpha 7C, raw + DxO PureRAW 3 using DeepPRIME XD, ISO 25,600, 100% crop

Using my 2019 Dell XPS 15 laptop running Windows 11 (Core i9-8950, Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 Ti GPU), Adobe Camera Raw processed them in 15 seconds. In contrast, PureRAW took 2min 23sec in HQ mode; 8min 11sec using PRIME; 4min 35sec in DeepPRIME; and 9min 54sec with DeepPRIME XD. To my mind, this makes DeepPRIME the best option for regular use.

DxO PureRAW 3: Optical Corrections

The other major advance in PureRAW 3 comes with the control it provides over lens corrections. Previously, you could only enable/disable distortion and sharpness compensation, with corrections for vignetting and chromatic aberration always being applied. Now, you can control them all. I have no idea why you’d ever want to turn off CA correction, but I’m happy to gain the option to exploit the lens’s natural vignetting for aesthetic effect.

You now get multiple cropping options when using distortion correction. Image credit: Andy Westlake

As previously mentioned, with distortion correction you now get multiple cropping options. Alongside the standard output at the camera’s original aspect ratio, you can also choose ‘maximum rectangle’ (which will be a little wider), and ‘complete image area’, which includes all the data captured by the camera (other areas are filled in with black). These options maximise flexibility when it comes to making further perspective corrections and cropping. But it’s worth bearing in mind that you’ll be working slightly outside the lens’s design parameters at the extreme edges of the image.

Here are the available options, illustrated using an image from the Leica Q2, which employs significant barrel distortion correction:

Leica Q2, 28mm, no distortion correction. Image credit: Andy Westlake

Leica Q2, 28mm, original aspect ratio. Image credit: Andy Westlake

Leica Q2, 28mm, maximum rectangle – note how this is slightly wider. Image credit: Andy Westlake

Leica Q2, 28mm, complete area. Image credit: Andy Westlake

There’s also now a choice of four levels of lens softness correction – Soft, Standard, Strong, and Hard – with the latter two providing an increased effect compared to PureRAW 2. This isn’t merely a boost in overall sharpening, but is profiled to address the cross-frame sharpness variation for each lens design. It should be especially interesting for photographers who choose their lenses for convenience and value, rather than paying a premium for the sharpest optics.

There are now four options for lens softness correction, of different strengths. Image credit: Andy Westlake

To illustrate this, I tested the correction settings using a landscape image from the Fujifilm X-T5 with the XF 16-80mm F4 R OIS WR, which isn’t known for its sharpness at wideangle. I was impressed by how PureRAW improved the overall contrast and detail rendition, particularly with the stronger settings. It’s not the same as upgrading to a sharper lens, but it’s the next best thing.

Fujifilm X-T5, XF 16-80mm F4 R OIS WR at 16mm, 1/120sec at f/11, ISO 125. DeepPrime processing, lens softness correction Hard. Image credit: Andy Westlake

Below are 100% crops comparing each of the available lens softness correction settings.

Lens softness compensation setting Soft, 100% crop. Image credit: Andy Westlake

Lens softness compensation setting Standard, 100% crop. Image credit: Andy Westlake

Lens softness compensation setting Strong, 100% crop. Image credit: Andy Westlake

Lens softness compensation setting Hard, 100% crop. Image credit: Andy Westlake

Likewise, PureRAW 3 can transform images shot with older kit. It produced excellent results with an old shot of a pair of penguins that I took using the Canon EOS 350D and EF 75-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM lens. That’s an 8MP DSLR dating from 2005, and a lens that was introduced a decade earlier (you can see the result below). As to which of the settings is ‘best’, I preferred Hard for the landscape shot, but felt Strong looked more natural with the wildlife. It’s good to have the choice.

DxO PureRAW 3: Our Verdict

I’ve used PureRAW as part of my workflow for a couple of years now, mainly to improve files shot at high ISOs. So I’m pleased to report that DxO PureRAW 3 builds on previous versions with some useful new features. It may look like you’re being asked to pay a lot of money for a program that doesn’t do very much, but nothing could be further from the truth. You’ll get strikingly better high-ISO image quality from your camera, and sharper images out of your lenses. It’s like upgrading all your kit, all at once – plus every camera and lens you previously owned, too.

DxO PureRAW 3 marks files you’ve already converted with a blue tick, and shows their new filename. Queued images have a black tick. Image credit: Andy Westlake

There’s an argument that PureRAW is expensive compared to DxO Optics Pro, which provides a fully-fledged raw converter for £199. But this rather misses the point, as PureRAW is specifically designed for people who don’t want to change their workflow and learn a whole new program.

DxO PureRAW 3 works wonders with older cameras and lenses. Canon EOS 350D, EF 75-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM at 145mm, 1/640sec at f/10, ISO 400. Image credit: Andy Westlake

PureRAW does have its limitations, of course. Most obviously, it takes a long time to process camera raw files, so make sure you try the free trial version first, to ensure it’ll meet your needs. And of course, while it does a brilliant job of addressing high-ISO noise and lens softness, it can’t fix blur from other sources, such as camera shake and subject motion. But that aside, it’s one of the most cost-effective ways available of boosting the technical quality of your images.

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• Facial mapping for face editing
• Auto selection tools for sky replacement
• Photomerge now includes panorama stitching
• $8.90 per month, or $150 a year
• www.acdsee.com

Monopolies aren’t healthy for anyone, so it is always good to see imaging software applications evolving to counter the dominance of Adobe. I don’t have anything at all against Adobe, and the company is powerful in this area for a number of very good reasons – I just like healthy competition. So many other applications have a range of strong points, but so many weak spots and missing features, that I find myself going back to Photoshop for my everyday needs.

ACDSee’s Photo Studio Ultimate 2023 seems to cover most bases that are important to most of us though, and with this latest update brings a number of promising extras that could be enough to lock new users in.

The more striking new features include an artificial intelligence face detection and editing tool that allows us to make extensive adjustments to a subject’s face shape, AI options for the selection and replacement of objects, skies and background, and a new merging tool that allows photo stitching, stacking and the creation of high dynamic range images.

Overview

For those who aren’t familiar with ACDSee’s Photo Studio, here’s a short explanation of the package and what it does. This is an image editing application that allows users to process RAW and JPEG files, and which features an organisational element for photographers to catalogue their files. It doesn’t force us to use the cataloguing feature, so gladly we don’t have to import images to work on them. We can just open, adjust and close it we want to.

Much like Adobe’s Lightroom, and other programs, the path of editing is broken into different stages with a series of operating windows in which we browse our catalogue/computer folders, and then ‘develop’ and edit our images. Newcomers will find it takes a while to comfortably navigate and to understand the process, but it is mostly pretty straightforward.

There is no separate workflow for RAW and JPEG files, so they both go through the same set of controls and tools, which is quite nice – we just have to be careful to notice when the JPEGs begin breaking up under extensive manipulations. I like the tools and their flexibility, and many offer the facility to moderate their impact after their application, so if you realise you’ve overdone it you are able to rein the effect back in a bit.

There is a whole pile of pre-set looks and effects that can be applied to create instant results, but most of these are so extreme and ghastly they should be treated with a good deal of caution or used in moderation.

While the range of controls is extensive and varied, I found it took me a lot longer than usual to process my images. Photo credit: Damien Demolder.

While the range of controls is extensive and varied, I found it took me a lot longer than usual to process my images. This isn’t due to the number of choices – though it was at first while I explored the application – but due so many standard tools needing their own window and their own ‘apply’ process that even some simple things become quite a task.

The program seems quite resource-heavy too and loading the image into a new interface for the next task involves all the previous filters and effects being applied once again in sequence before the image is ready for further work. There is a bit of a lag too in places between a slider being moved and the effect being shown, so it’s easy to push sliders too far without realising the strength of the effect.

I also found the program hangs and needs restarting when faced with folders that contain both still images and videos, which is really frustrating.

It seems unnecessary that so many tools are duplicated between the Develop and Edit panes, as they seem to do the same things, and moving from the Edit pane back to the Develop pane requires we save the image to ensure changes applied in the Edit pane carry forward. It all seems a bit convoluted and long-winded.

In the Repair window the Smart Erase tool is exceptionally good, but each individual repair takes so long to effect that dusting a product shot would be completely impractical.

However, despite all that, the results the application produces are very good and there isn’t too much we can’t do to our images using this program. I just wish it was a bit more streamlined.

I also object to the fact that the application has rather invaded my Windows operating system and has put itself as the default for ‘Open With…’ options and shows all image files in Explorer with the ACDSee icon. As disorganised as I am, I would prefer to choose how image files are displayed and in which application they get opened in. It’s like having a cuckoo in my PC.

It is also worth checking that the application is compatible with the RAW files from your camera – we got off on the wrong foot when I discovered it couldn’t read the images I’d taken for this test with the Lumix GH6.

Face AI

The Face AI is the most fascinating element of this new application and I looked forward to seeing what it can do. This part of the program lives in the Edit pane and clicking AI Face Edit loads your image into a new interface specifically for this task. The AI part of the application is that it detects a face, or a number of faces, in the frame and identifies the key features of each.

ACDSee’s Face AI at work. Photo credit: Damien Demolder.

It detects a face, or a number of faces, in the frame and identifies the key features of each. Photo credit: Damien Demolder.

Eyes, eyebrows, nose, chin, jaw lines, and cheeks are detected and mapped, so the characteristics of each can be adjusted. Eyes can be opened a bit more, widened, narrowed, lifted, brought together or spaced wider and whitened. We can even change the direction in which they are looking – though unfortunately not individually. Wrinkles around the eyes can be removed and bags reduced.

Before. Photo credit: Damien Demolder.

After. Photo credit: Damien Demolder.

Eye adjustment options. Photo credit: Damien Demolder.

The rest of the face can be slimmed or bulked, made longer or shorter, foreheads extended, chins reduced and jawlines made more or less rugged. You can, in fact, alter someone’s appearance so much it hardly looks like them at all, but at the same time with minor tweaks and twitches we can moderate an unfortunate expression or make someone having a bad day look like they slept well, that they’ve been keeping hydrated and as though they don’t eat fast food on a regular basis.

If adjustments are looking a bit lop-sided it’s possible to inspect and correct the program’s mapping of the face, should hair, a hat or some other obstruction have confused the detection process.

I found, as with most image manipulations, that less is more and, if you intend your human to remain looking human, moderate changes that might not be noticed even by their best friends are the most effective. Bags and lines can be subdued rather than eliminated, and faces slimmed or plumped to healthier days. So long as you maintain this attitude your subject will look good and be still recognisable, but also the software will be able to work effectively.

As soon as you try to make dramatic changes the artificial intelligence becomes more artificial than intelligent, and your changes will have a destructive impact. With this in mind, the measures of the adjustment strength could be tempered a little to make smaller changes easier.

You might also use caution when altering the eyebrows of glasses wearers as the software will sometimes adjust the shape of the frames rather than the brows. It seems a little crazy too that the Skin Smoothing tool hasn’t been integrated with the Face AI so it can actually detect what to smooth rather than just smoothing the whole image.

Selection

A new AI selection section now exists in the Edit pane. These tools allow the user to make selections with a single click, as the software itself makes judgements on what is and is not required. Automated options are listed for removing a background, selecting a subject, selecting a sky, blurring a background and for making the background black and white. These tasks rely on the AI understanding what the subject is and where it sits in the frame, and then determining which bits we’ll want selected.

Automated options are listed for removing a background, selecting a subject, selecting a sky, blurring a background and for making the background black and white. Photo credit: Damien Demolder.

I am really very impressed with how well the AI can identify what the subject is in the frame. With images where the depth-of-field is shallow the selective focus gives the software a massive clue, but I thought I’d be clever and offer it a rare shot taken at f/22 that has everything in focus – and it still managed to detect what the subject was. It will sometimes include other areas too, which are easy to eliminate from our enquiries, but in the main it did really rather well.

It is rather less good though at actually selecting the subjects, skies and backgrounds than detecting where they are, and elements such as hair, out-of-focus features and glasses/headphone cables/accessories are sometimes left behind.

Trying out subject selection. Photo credit: Damien Demolder.

Elements such as hair, out-of-focus features and glasses/headphone cables/accessories are sometimes left behind. Photo credit: Damien Demolder.

The same principals and problems apply to actions to remove the background and to turn it black and white. Blurring the background can be made better by performing it on a duplicate layer and then reducing the opacity to make it less obvious when not everything has been selected properly, and of course there are tools to clean up the AI selections.

Sky selected. Photo credit: Damien Demolder.

I found the Select Sky surprisingly good too, and was quite amazed at how well it works. I offered it a simple sky-and-mountains shot at first which it understood pretty well. Then I gave it a much more complicated sky-visible-through-trees picture which it managed even better.

Before using the select sky tool. Photo credit: Damien Demolder.

After the change sky tool. Using this I was able to trade patches of white Cretan sky showing between leaves with a much bluer and more summery sky from Portsmouth. Photo credit: Damien Demolder.

Using this I was able to trade patches of white Cretan sky showing between leaves with a much bluer and more summery sky from Portsmouth – who would believe? Dropping the opacity of the post-Brexit imported sky layer allowed me to create something quite credible. I do not have the patience to make manual selections like this, so was pleased the AI action has produced something I can use.

Selecting a background to make it black and white should be illegal, but performing it on a duplicate layer allows us to lightly and more tastefully desaturate a background using the opacity slider.

Merging

We’ve had photo merging in ACDSee Photo Studio Ultimate before for HDR and Focus Stacking, but this new version also offers us the chance to stitch panoramas together from multiple images. To get my hand in I also tried out the HDR feature and was left with a slightly flat and dull image that was not as good as the result of processing a single RAW file of the same shot.

The automatic panorama stitching gave me mixed results. Well, I say mixed, but I suppose I mean unsatisfactory. I shot eight different panoramas and joiners, and asked the program to put each set together, and only one of those was useable. The application seems incapable of creating a panorama without leaving some pretty obvious clues about where the stitches are.

The automatic panorama stitching gave me mixed results. Photo credit: Damien Demolder.

I allowed masses of overlap but the duplicated details weren’t used to create smooth joins and aligned sections of the scene. I worried that I’ve given the program too much overlap to work with, so tried merging fewer images with less overlap. But while that created a different result in some cases, feeding the processes less information isn’t a failsafe answer.

I found repeating a merge gave slightly different results each time, so the actual answer might be to keep trying until you get a result that either works or which can be easily fixed.

For comparison I passed the same sets of images through the Photomerge function of Adobe Photoshop and, while the results weren’t perfect in every case and each merge took longer, they were consistently very much better. I found the ACDSee algorithm added coloured fringing in places it didn’t exist in the individual images, double exposures, missing edges and areas of fluffy detail where there may have been at least two images providing the information needed.

ACDSee Photo Studio Ultimate 2023 Verdict

ACDSee’s main edit interface. Photo credit: Damien Demolder.

If I were to come back to ACDSee Photo Studio Ultimate 2023 it would be for the Face AI adjustments if I needed to ‘help’ a portrait sitter look their best. While it’s easy to over-use this feature, moderate applications can be very beneficial to the sitter and the photographer at the same time.

I have been impressed with the facial mapping, the customisation available and the range and effectiveness of the adjustments. I doubt I would need them all in any one sitting, but each has a place and together they present an excellent set of tools to ensure sitters will be pleased with their images.

The general package is very full and the application offers a massive range of image editing options that will keep everyone happy. I’m not sure the workflow is as smooth and efficient as it could be, but many individual tools – such as the Smart Erase tool – stand out as really great performers.

My main concern, and the reason I’d find it hard to come back to the program, is that things just take too long to do. An image I rotated had to un-rotate and re-rotate itself every time I adjusted its size on-screen, and the number of tools that need their own window and their own processing time would drive me mad.

The new selection and merging functions deliver mixed results and could do with some automatic tuning or more manual refining options for the user. I often found a ragged selection or a fluffed merge meant that the image either needed fixing or just couldn’t be used. The program isn’t bad for the money, but I’m not especially impressed with all the new features.

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